In an unexpected turn of events on July 3rd, Simon Kinsey walked limped off with the VCC 100-mile title for 2022.  He claimed it by default as the only VCC finisher on the day.  As the saying goes, you’ve have to be in it to win it!

Pre-race favourite was triathlete Tom Danter, who had recently signed on with VCC following a stint with our friends at Cardiff Ajax CC.  He had no recent TT form so was flying below the radar of the boffins at Spindata, but it was clear from his Strava profile that Tom was no stranger to two-wheeled transportation and would merely need to stay upright to bag the 2022 title — much like fellow triathlete Kyle Blackmore who had done precisely that in Carmarthenshire a year earlier.

These days, Simon claims to be using TT events as “training rides” to bring himself back towards some semblance of respectability.  Yep, training rides.  Always good to get the excuses in early.  Simon’s ranking had plummeted over the last two seasons, with Spindata placing him in the D18 category and predicting a finish time of 5:02:55 for this event.  He had been mildly encouraged by this forecast, having previously hinted that five hours would be a reasonable target for the day.  He would start at 7:13am, 27 minutes ahead of Tom, fully expecting to be overtaken on the first lap.

Number-cruncher Simon likes likes to perform in-ride calculations to gauge how he’s doing relative to his pre-race goal.  So he was less than impressed to find that his newly-acquired Garmin Edge 1030 device was far too clever for its own good.  Its constant bleeps, alerts, screen-changes, weather forecasts and other distractions were not conducive to Simon’s effort, and he spent much of the ride longing for his older less sophisticated device.  The kerfuffle probably added about 5 bpm to his pulse, but he had no way of knowing — the gadget providing a constant stream of worthless trivia.  All that said, when you ride at Simon’s pace you don’t need fancy technology to track your progress; a calendar is a perfectly adequate option.

So, operating solely on perceived exertion, Simon was unsurprised when at mile 45 he saw what he believed to be Tom come past him with a considerable speed delta.  He gave “Tom” a few words of encouragement and returned to his own suffering.

And so it continued, for a second lap and then a third lap.  Plus an extra ten miles for good measure.  Simon passed his parked car on seven occasions during the self-inflicted misery but did at least manage to resist all temptation to pack up his bike and call it a day.  Small wins!  Eventually he reached the finish after a particularly gruelling last fifteen miles into a fresh headwind, and made one last seven-mile trek to get back to the car and then onward to the HQ to congratulate Tom.

It was there that Simon discovered that the overtaker at mile 45 had not been Tom at all.  The rider in question had taped his number onto his jersey, so it was slightly obscured at the time.  This, combined with the rider’s speed and Simon’s discomfort all added up to a case of mistaken identity.  It turned out that Tom had sent his apologies in advance and had instead opted for an impressive training ride of his own.

So that was that. Simon missed his personal target by just under fifteen minutes but ended up reclaiming a title he’d held in 2018 and 2019, then stuck around for the formalities before heading home to “rehydrate”.  But there would be little time to rest, with the championship season now in full swing.