Woke up to thunderstorms and torrential rain on Saturday morning but we packed to van regardless and headed off to Haytor for the first of the MDCC hill climbs.
We arrived pretty early so decided to do a quick reccie up the hill in the van to check out the conditions. The road surface wasn't too bad but the cattle grid was very sketchy and as we ascended further we entered the fog. Visibility was quite poor toward the summit.
We signed on and were the told the race was to go ahead and as I was the first rider of the day we headed back to the van to get changed and do a warm up on the turbo with the plan being to complete the warm up 10 mins before my start time of 10:11 and then drive up to the start line.
We arrived at the start and had just got the bike out when one of the organisers approached us and asked if we knew the start had been delayed for 30 minutes and that the course had been shortened due to the bad weather :S
So it was now smashing down with rain so I had to sit it out in the van and wait with the warm up pretty much wasted...Oh well!
Eventually it was time for the off and for the first 2 mins or so my legs felt crappy but eventually that went away and I settled into a steady rhythm and began to pickup the pace.
Ended up taking the Junior win by around 40 seconds with a time of 8:41. Not bad since this was my first hill climb event and I was on a mid weight road bike ;)
Sadly the Widecombe hill climb planned for the afternoon had to be cancelled due to the deteriorating weather conditions but I'll definitely give it a go when it's re-scheduled.
