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By David Tozer
After a Christmas break that seemed to last an eternity, Sunraysia's cyclists were keen to return to racing. However, the person responsible for the Summer calender must have been feeling particularly sadistic when pencilling in a 24 kilometre Individual Time Trial as the first event after the lay-off.
The circuit used for Time Trials is reasonably flat and conditions on Tuesday evening (22 January 2002) were as near to perfect as a Mildura cyclist is going to get. The feeling prior to the race was that regardless of the ideal weather, a lack of race fitness would result in slower times.
Cyclists realised, after completing the first of three laps, that times were extremely fast and many dug deep to attempt to record a new personal best time. The cycling club had trialed a new scoring system for Time Trials prior to Christmas. Rather than giving riders a handicap and having cyclist compete against each other, the new system creates a race purely against the clock. Riders receive points for getting close to or beating their personal best times. Those riders within 5% of P.B. receive one point, those within 2% get Four points and any new P.B.s get a maximum of nine points, toward the Summer series tally.
The new scoring system for Time Trials has been well received by members and takes the pressure off the club handicapper and allows him to enjoy Tuesday nights without having to worry about creating an even playing field for all entrants. It was decided that all Time Trials post Christmas would be conducted under the new format.
It is now evident that weather conditions will play an important role in Time Trial points allocation, Tuesday night's results show that a number of riders were able to surpass their previous best times. Harvey Dwyer put in the ride of the night. In a time of 36 minutes, 21 seconds and at an average speed of 39.6 kilometres per hour, Dwyer was able to improve his best time by over one minute. Other riders to record new P.Bs were: Rob McNally, Jack Lokan, Alan Alyward, David Tozer and Arthur Anderson.
The club's next event is a 45-minute criterium at the ornamental lakes circuit, 9.00 am Sunday morning.
1 David Tozer 33.41 (42.75km/h) 2 Rob McNally 1.50 3 Harvey Dwyer 2.40