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@bq
Yes, he did...
[INDENT]Yep, I sure did ride the dreaded A12. I competed in 10, 25, and 30 mile time trials held by the Essex and Suffolk Border Cycling Combine to which our club was affiliated. The ESBCC weren't allotted the 'choice' times (floaty Sunday mornings in summer) for their events and all of them were held on midweek evenings. Only 120 riders were allowed to start in TTs so the clubs running events on that course could take their pick from the fastest riders in the country, who were queuing up to ride the E72 or the 'Borough' one up in Yorkshire.
The best I did in a 25 was 1-1-41, in June 1980, so the Quinn was 6 months old. I finished in 27th place on time, 6th on handicap (it was my first season of racing again after nearly 20 years. Being an evening event the drag factor wasn't strong. The outer leg of the course is longer so It's not your usual halfway out and back one. Dave Godbold (our club's best rider, caught me at the turn for 2 minutes and finished in 56-43 to get 3rd place overall) so I was heading for a finishing time well under the hour but I got cramp in my right leg just after the turn and more or less limped to the finish.
The scariest race I rode on it was a 50 mile TT. That wasn't an ESBCC event but was promoted by the Viking RC. My start time was at 6am on a Sunday morning in late September. I rode in thick fog, and needless to say, there was little traffic. I finished in 2.15.39, my eyeballs popping with trying to keep the white line of the road edge in sight! The conditions were so bad that, halfway through, the police stopped the race until the fog cleared. So it was a bit of a lottery really, with the second half of the field riding in sunshine and of course producing much faster times.[/INDENT]