The National 12hr TT was a chance to redeem myself after the Mersey Roads 24hr went badly wrong.
I wrote here about all of the changes I made, including most of my food, all of my drink and quite a lot of my bike setup.
https://wellchuffedcomms.com/2026/08/10/last-minute-prep-before-the-rttc-national-12-hour-champs/
All of the food and drink worked! The Pure Endure pouches were fantastic. Simple ingredients (fruit pulp, date syrup, lemon juice and pinch of salt) with a decent hit of carbs. The addition of salt meant they weren’t sickly either. I really, really liked them and I’ll be using them again in future long TTs.
Guava blocks were dependable as always.
The Enervit Isocarb drink was also an epic win. I made it up to give 60g of carbs per 500ml of drink. Even made up that strong it had a mild taste and never felt like a chore to drink.
Taking one bottle, a pouch and a guava block every hour provided around 110g of easily digested carbs. I never felt like I was forcing food down, nor did I feel that food was starting to back up in my system. If anything, I could have managed an extra pouch per hour, but I only had a limited number of them.
Moving to bottles made drinking easier than using the backpack. The saddle mounted rear bottle cage worked just fine, as did bottle mounted between my arms.
Trying to decipher CTT routes is….challenging. I’d worked out locations where Baggy needed to be to hand up supplies, all of them in lay-bys on the dual carriageway, and given her estimated times to be at each one. Happily, I’d worked out the route & timings correctly! There was none of the ‘what do I want to eat?’ nonsense from the 24. I just dumped empty bottles & pouches, took on replacements, kissed Baggy and headed off. I spent around 18 minutes stopped in total, which is more efficient than I was expecting. Pulling into a lay-by also felt much quicker than turning off the road and finding the horsebox on the 24hr.
The new cockpit was fine. Everything stayed in place and it was comfortable enough.
The course is fast and I don’t mind a bit of dual-carriageway. TBH, I find it safer than most cross country A roads – you’re all going in the same direction, sight lines are good and the road is straight and wide. The only sketchy bits are where you have to pass slip-roads – those need special attention. The non-DC bits were a bit lumpier, but not offensive. I managed to keep my head down, maintained a steady pace and kept on the bars for the vast majority of the ride.
My Vitesse wheel covers arrived later than expected. In fact they turned up just a few hours before we were due to drive up to Wales! I weighed up the wisdom of doing some completely unfamiliar fettling less than 24hrs before a race and decided to give it a go. Fitting them was easier than I expected, although there was some tweaking required to keep them off the spokes. Normal, apparently, but a bit stressy with the clock ticking.
The only problem was about half way through when my biceps started to really, really ache. I stopped, messaged Baggy & requested ibuprofen when we next met. She got me some quick-acting Nurofen (yay!) which did the trick. I suppose some gel might also have helped. I’ll be experimenting with my position in future – my arms are definitely not at right angles, so moving the bars closer might help.
There were a few patches where it felt like I was slowing down a bit – the first lap of the finishing circuit felt especially slow, but there were no grim moments
Rolled to the final timekeeper feeling pretty good. Happy to have finished, but also not feeling trashed. Even the ride back to HQ wasn’t too awful.
I’d got my GPS set to display distance in kilometres – doing Bad Maths and converting from km to miles is a great way to stave off boredom. I didn’t have real expectations, but I really, really wasn’t expecting to break 250 miles. But I did! 254.35 miles, in fact. And, even better, I won my age category. I don’t think many winners react by shouting ‘bloody hell!’ but I did. One of the marshalls said that I was probably the happiest person in the hall and she was right. I just wish Mum and Dad were still around to see the pictures.
Conditions were clearly good – the overall 12hr record fell, as did the women’s record. You can see all the results and a good write-up on the CTT link below.
https://www.cyclingtimetrials.org.uk/events/41753-rttc-national-12-hour-championship
What made me happy, apart from winning a frikkin’ medal, was seeing a wider range of people riding. More women, basically, and not just at the speedy end of the field. There was one girl (yes, a girl, she was 18 and I’m very, very old) who did 224 miles on a regular road bike. I’m not even sure it fitted her properly TBH. That’s awesome. Imagine what she might do with more experience and a better bike? Even better was the woman on another regular bike, with a bar bag. I don’t care what mileage she did, it almost feels rude to mention that, because she turned up and rode the bloody thing as if it was an audax and I love her for it. At the other end was the chap who broke the wrinkly old bastards record, with 224 miles aged 74. That’s something to aspire to. And a special mention to Mary Corbett, on her trike. IIRC, she’s well into her 60s too. I mean, yes, the winners both set new records but who cares about elite level amateur athletes doing their thing? I’m more impressed by people of more humble means exploring their limits and giving it a bloody good go. BTW, did I mention that I won a medal?
So what next? Well, I need to improve my position. It works, but my arms ache and I still look like a folded eclair. There’s bugger all I can do about the latter – I’m a sack of spuds with short legs, so I’m never going to be elegant, but I might be a bit faster with a few tweaks. And I could still stand to lose another 10-15kg, especially round the middle. No doubt I’ll try another 12hr next year, although this one went about as well as it could have. The big one will be another crack at the 24hr. My current plan is to 12hr it for the first half, lay down 240 miles and then roll round the last 12hrs at a much more sedate pace. I reckon I can easily break 400 miles and maybe aim as 450.
Meanwhile, did I mention that I won a medal?
Well Chuffed Cycling 