The off season is now well underway, the tan lines are quickly fading, the beard is growing well and so is the stomach, only a few pounds extra weight though, both of these things should help me stay warm through the winter months! The TORQ riders had one last scheduled race, the Bristol Oktoberfest 8 hour team relay on the 15th of November.
The event would be my first ride around the reworked Ashton Court trails which I spent three years training on whilst at university. The trails now benefit from being all weather, they would be great fun to train on but passing places and alternative lines are limited which made passing difficult.
The TORQ team has competition from a very strong Rapha Condor/ Sigma Sport professional road team collaboration who a month earlier had raced the Tour of Britain. The road riders started fast and it took us nearly 4 hours to make up the early time gaps they’d built. On my second lap I caught and created a small gap back into the arena over Simon Richarson of Sigma Sport Specialized. From this point on TORQ rode in the confidently in the lead to edge out a ten minute gap which allowed us the opportunity to fit in one lap more than the road team within the eight hour race time.
We were challenged but the team rode consistently to take another victory. It was a tough race having not trained in the three weeks between this race and the final national. The course made things tricky but it was a fun way to sign off the season.
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