Well, it has often been the source of much speculation : who are the stronger riders ? The muddy but tough-looking Mountain Bike riders who seem to tackle all terrain and surfaces, up or down, whatever the gradient and the conditions, or the sleek and smooth-looking roadies who aim for speed above all else.
Well the competition at the last Club Night found an answer.
Our excellent Social Secretary set up a competition using two bikes and two turbo trainers with five riders from each of the two disciplines. Each rider had to ride their quickest against the clock (John Eglington doing the honours as usual) on each combo, on one over a distance of one kilometre, on the second over 3 kilometres.
Leading the MTB team was Richard Sterry (already known to the roadies as a fast competitor on the turbos from the competition earlier in the year) with Alex Bottomley (just plain fast!), Gareth Ashton (known to be quick from Calshot) and two riders not well known to the roadies, Jed Rock and Adam Russell.
Against these were the roadies comprising ; Darrell High (fresh from his fantastic second place on a running/orienteering/climbing double marathon in Wales the previous weekend), Tracey Austin (top time triallist), Time Sales, Gavin Garrett and Richard Sanders (all three regular time trial riders and road racers).
Well, it didn’t take too long for the roadies to realise that they might have met their match with this elite MTB rider team. Richard Sterry (MTB) led the way on the 1km with a strong 50.84 sec ride beating Darrell’s time by about 4 seconds but worse was to come for the roadies with both Alex and Adam recording sub-48 second rides. Things were redressed somewhat with Darrell going all-out on the 3 km ride to record 3:38 secs , closely followed by Tracey who got huge praise for her strong performance at 3:43 secs. But were these longer rides by the roadies good enough to keep the MTB riders at bay ? Regrettably no. All of the MTB riders made a good effort but Alex and Richard in particular with their sub-4 min performances received much applause. However, everyone witnessed the fantastic ride of Adam Russell who comfortably beat even Darrell and Tracey’s time over the 3 kms to record fastest time of the day at 3:34 secs. Overall, the MTB team won with a margin of 1 min 40 seconds over the roadies (19 mins 41 secs vs 21 mins 21 secs.
A good natured competition and it was gratifying to have a welcome number of spectators as well as the riders. Congratulations to the MTB team (they will be insufferable!) and thanks to Richard Sanders for organising yet another excellent social event.