National 25TT
There was one of the strongest CUCC showings in years at the weekend’s National 25, with 7 riders qualifying for the event.
Hayley Simmonds, who submitted her PhD this year, continued her storming summer at the Womens’ event on Saturday. Having already won the BC national championships (and therefore the right to wear the national champion’s jersey), set new competition records at 10, 25 and 50 miles in the space of 2 weeks (and new club records in the process!) she was the favourite lining up for the start. She came home with a clear winning margin of over a minute and a half in a time of 54:57. Hayley has been a mainstay of the club’s BUCS effort winning more BUCS points on her own than probably any other athlete in Cambridge and it will be sad to see her go!
In the mens event there were 6 people riding- in itself an acheivement, really showing the strength in depth the club has at the moment. It was quite windy, making for a very fast first leg but depressingly slow second half. John Mulvey did best of the bunch doing a short 50 and coming 27th. The second man in the Varsity team, this now means that he has completed all the criteria and is the clubs newest Full Blue!
Hal came agonisingly close to joining him but fell short so is still a half blue for the moment
MTB XC Varsity Match
Report by Tom Simpson . . .
The 2016 Varsity mountain bike XC was held on a chilly Sunday in February at Crowthorne Woods in Berkshire. The team, which left Cambridge at 6:00am (already demonstrating their greater commitment over Oxford by waking up an hour earlier), consisted of captain Matt Rodgers, myself, old hand Fin Allen, ‘retired’ 24-hour racer Andrew Clark and fresher Danny Taylor. Reaching Crowthorne two hours later we threw in a practice lap of the course, Danny making good use of his kneepads after snagging a tree; between us, our 780mm bars made us more rad but also more bloody-fingered on the twisty woodland course. We had time for a brief introduction with the team from The Other Place [Oxford] and found that our universities’ engineering prowess had resulted in not one but two home-built bikes being raced.
The nine of us lined up on the start line together after giving the category with which we shared the race a five minute head start. Oxford’s female rider, Tamara Davenne, competed separately in the women’s race, topping the podium. Meanwhile in the men’s Varsity, split seconds after the starting horn, a loud crunching and cursing indicated a bad start for Oxford’s Tom Everitt with a broken chain. The start was fast, but I held second followed by two more Oxfords and the Cambridge team into the first single track section. Unfortunately they soon edged past, but I held the third’s wheel with Matt in close pursuit behind, managing to pull him back and take a chunk of time through the second and third laps. The winding course gave regular sightings of Andy and Fin working their way through the men’s field with which they had made contact soon after the start.Continue reading
Freshers’ TT 2015
Well done to the 22 riders who rode our Freshers’ TT this afternoon. Particular congratulations goes to the fastest male and female riders of the day, Sam Bell (Trinity) and Rachel Grewcock (Trinity), who completed the 10km course in 13mins 56secs and 17mins 38secs respectively to claim the Espresso Library jerseys.
Results can be viewed here and photos taken by Women’s Captain, Lottie Mallin-Martin, can be found here