Two days after a Vets event at Maendy track, Committee member, Dean Cummings travelled to Worcestershire in mid-May for his next road outing, The Gerry Hughes Memorial RR. The venue was Martley, just to the west of the city of Worcester and having ridden the event previously Dean was familiar with the course. The route comprised of four 10.5 mile loops on testing roads. Knowing that this was a tough course wasn’t an advantage on this particular day and with the fatigue of the track race still in his legs he was unable to maintain contact with the strong field of riders and packed in on the third lap. Knowing your own body and paying attention to the signs is always a good thing to give the aching muscles a chance to recover.
Having recovered from his efforts the previous week Dean returned to Worcestershire for the, very competitive, National LVRC RR. This time he was in the south of the county, just north of Tewkesbury. This course is on the edge of the Malvern Hills and although the climbs are not long, they are very sharp. Today’s course would see the riders cover three 16.3 mile loops, 49 miles in total.
This Race was open to all Cats. EFG up to age 75 set off first, followed by Dean’s group CD with a 6 min gap, followed by AB another 6mins behind . Being the National Champs. the event attracted a very strong field of men and women. Prior to the start one of Dean’s fellow riders gave a Churchillian style speech on how his group should catch the front group. This set the tone and the CD riders went from the gun reaching a max speed of 42.7 mph in the first 6 miles. The group became disjointed early on and soon began to break up with only the strongest riders holding the high speeds. Dean managed to settle in with a small group and worked hard riding through an extreme thunder storm to finish the race.
Impressive statistics were recorded by Acme’s road man, 49.5 miles in 2hrs 22mins with an average speed of 20.8mph. Dean described the max. speed of 42.9 mph as a nightmare. In order to keep up with the group Dean needed to put out an average of 206 Watts with a maximum of 582 Watts. Where would be without all this technical data. Well done Dean flying the flag for Acme Wheelers on the road.
