Racing round-up

A brace of Lewes Wanderers took part in Crawley Wheelers’ Sporting Time-Trial on Good Friday, 7th April.  In the road bike category Richard Burchett covered the rolling 41.6 mile course in a fine time of 1 hour 50 minutes and 31 seconds to place 8th from 14 finishers with 3 failing to complete the course.  Neil Edwards also tackled the route on his road bike, but due to an admin error found himself classed among the TT-bike entrants.  His time of 1:55:22 gave him 21st out of 32 (with one non-finisher) in that event.

Michael Valks by Emma Gearing

There were twice that number of Lewes riders in the Veteran Time Trials Association 10-mile event on Saturday 15th April.  Sally Turner (racing for HUUB Wattshop) proved fastest of the trio of female entrants and her time of just one second outside of 23 minutes was also 7th overall.  Thirteen seconds and a couple of places behind her was Richard Burchett, while father and son Paul and Michael Valks were 20th in 32:52 and 15th in 27:34 respectively.

Peter Baker was the only Wanderer to participate in Eastbourne Rovers’ opening 10-mile TT of the year on the same A22-Boship based course that the VTTA event had been held on five days earlier.  On this evening Peter would record a time of 27:57 to take 6th place from the nine to start.

The same course was used by the East Sussex Cycling Association on the chilly morning of Saturday 22nd April when a quartet of Wanderers raced.  Richard Burchett snuck inside the top ten with a speedy 22:30.  Gavin Richard was 18th in 24:25, while Kate Mankelow was fastest female and 20th overall while stopping the clock after exactly 25 minutes of effort.  Peter Baker improved on his time from two nights earlier as he came 22nd from 29 finishers in 26:24.  The corresponding 25-mile event due to be conducted the following morning was cancelled due to bad weather.