It all started with an email from Nick asking club members to join in the hill climb season. (Note Danny Started it NH !) As Neil never checks his emails, I dutifully passed on the message, to which he replied ‘Ha, I don’t think so!’ As we sat reminiscing over a bottle of Rioja that evening, he decided he might just be interested in a local hill climb…”The Rake”. Before he could change his mind, I had checked out the date, completed the online entry (who knew you could now enter via ‘tinternet) and informed the instigator ! No backing out now Neil!
Nick asked me to write a bit about Neil’s preparation for this hill climb, most of you will follow Strava and are likely to know more about Neil’s preparation than me!
The weekend of THE RAKE, however, was the weekend we had planned to start our kitchen renovations, kids packed off to Nana Julie’s and a whole weekend of DIY!!! Whilst Neil was resting up and doing a light spin on Saturday, his doting caring wife continued with the DIY and managed to demolish a wall, rip out a kitchen and tidy up again (Neil couldn’t help himself when I insisted on using a manual screwdriver instead of the cordless 😉)!
And so the day of the hill climb arrived, Neil appeared relatively calm and (I will never understand this) weirdly excited about the prospect of racing up a very steep hill! I left him at the bottom and walked up to wait on the obligatory bend before the last final bit (the bit near the handrail) where I found Dave Grogan and Pauline Cooper also supporting our gents.
It was great to see such a fantastic turn out, and brilliant that we had 6 riders of our own to cheer on! I managed to stay and watch most of the race but unfortunately I missed Louis’ ride as I had to leave to pick up the kids, Neil assured me he looked cool as a cucumber and flew up the hill in an amazing time of 2:36.3 making him 11th fastest on the day! Neil was the next Centreville rider in 45th position with a time of 3:13.5. Ben Whitehead was in 50th place (3:18.6), closely followed by Danny Shackleton in 53rd place (3:19.0). Jon Taylor was 85th with a time of 4:05.0 and Ken Whitehead in 91st position with a very respectable time of 4:22.8.
Hats off to you all, massive respect, I’m looking forward to next year already (and before you ask, no I won’t be riding myself!).
Report By Katherine Swithenbank
Thanks for the feature Katherine, Chapeau !
Great write up Kath!!!!
Notnhig I could say would give you undue credit for this story.
What’s holding me back is the fact that I can’t get this 32GB or higher version of it. If it wasn’t cause of that, I would have ordered one already. Let’s hope they announce one soon