Kingston to Worthing Ride #2

Simon T and I rode down to Worthing as the early group leaving at 7am, accompanied by Susie, a friend of Simon's from Epsom Tri Club. We had both elected to take the TT bikes as Simon has the Outlaw Triathlon in 2 weeks and I have the SCCU 100 and the ECCA 12 hour TT coming up, so we both felt some time getting acquainted with the TT position would be beneficial. More so for me after a pretty dire outing in the 50 last week, when I got very achy and sore in the TT position. So I used this ride to tinker with my set up and also tried out my own homemade aero bottle holder between the tri bars, which actually worked a treat.

An old bottle holder and 4 cable ties.

Weather was so-so, but no real torrential rain so no need for gillets or wet-weather gear. Susie is training for Ride London and found it pretty tough as we got towards Worthing, but after bribing her with coffee and snacks at Macaries on the sea front, we managed to convince her not to get the train back. We saw Jake's group about 5 miles out of Worthing and of course this was the only spot on the whole A24 where you could barely see across the carriageway. Typical.

The traffic was quite heavy and Simon and I were definitely privileged to a 'punishment-pass' by a white van driver but everyone else behaved themselves. We took the decision to come off the A24 and picked up the A29 which was quite a bit quieter, before getting back on the 24 at Beare Green. No doubt, it was a slow day had we run the K-W TT. Hopefully next year there will be no more cones and it will be a float day. Fingers crossed.

Refuelling at Macaries.

The good news for me was that the changes I made to the front end of my TT bike seem to have worked and I had no aches or pains after the ride. Whether the same can be said after 12 hours is of course yet to be tested!