Following the cancellation of the ECCA 100 due to (very) thick fog three weeks ago I have entered the Southern Counties 100. Looking at the very spare course details given on the CTT website it looked like the course was centred on the Crawley area. This is a long way to travel for an early start but I thought it would be OK.
The start sheet has now arrived and I find out the start is just north of Ashingdon. Yes the course does go up to Crawley (twice) but it also goes down to Washington Bostle roundabout (yup, you got it...twice) so it's within a spit of the south coast. I'm aiming to beat 5 hours and from what I can see the course is seriously harder than the Kent CU one I rode 2 years ago when I did 4:59. For those of you who have not ridden a 100 mile time trial, the first 25 miles are generally fairly easy, up to 50 is OK - I've done 2 50's this year so far and I know I can live with the effort - but from about 80 miles onwards it's a real pain fest. Just trying to stay up to 20 mph hurts and any notion of maintaining anything like a real race pace is just fantasy. I can remember parts of the southern end from training rides in the 80's centred on Worthing and it's a tad more than "rolling" so adding in the weather, which if it holds it's current promise will be cool, wet and windy and I'm facing sunday with more than a little trepidation. Wish me luck chaps.
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