FWCC Summer Cross Round 3
The Fareham Wheelers Summer Cyclocross series at Romsey may have been short but it sure was sweet and put big smiiles on a lot of faces!
Congrats to Andy Gardiner, sprinting to the win in last week's round 3 combined senior race. There were also youth wins for Freddie, Thomas and Izzy. Top 3s for Tom, James, Matilda, Jaya, Billy, Ben, Jacob, Skye, Emma, Tom, Niclas and George.
Thanks to Theresa, Mark and the gang for putting such a great little series.
Top notch photos from Pitchsidephoto as always
May Segment of the Month report
23 Sotonians competed in last month's segment on Poles Lane. Fastest female was Sarah Needle, with Isabella Hall the fastest female U16 competitor. Will Weynberg was fastest again for the male entrants, and it was good to see George Connell enter and win the fastest male U16 competition.
Things are very tight at the top of the female competition, with Debbie Hallett and Suzanne Willis narrowly ahead of Sarah Needle. Issy Hall is the sole female U16, and takes 4th place in the female all age.
Will Weynberg sits at the top of the male rankings, with Andy Gardiner hot on his heels. George Connell is currently the only male U16 rider.
June sees the competition move to a hill climb, 500 metres of Cow Drove Hill in Kings Somborne. https://www.strava.com/segments/26709382. Which of our lighter riders will play their Jokers?
New entrants always welcome to the competition. Just read the document here
And full results can be viewed here
The Tandem Tart Ten, 19 June 2022
Ever wondered what it would be like to take part in a cycling time trial. Or perhaps you have already done so and said “never again” – until the next time that is! Well on 19th June 2022, the Tandem Tart 10 will once more be taking place in Lyndhurst in the heart of the beautiful New Forest. The event is open to Road Bikes, Time Trial Bikes, a 2 up Team Time Trial and of course, Tandems.
Although you have to be a member of a CTT affiliated Club to enter, Sotonia CC are offering a one-day free membership included with your entry fee. Just register with CTT using this link and add Sotonia CC as your Club.
https://www.cyclingtimetrials.org.uk
You don’t have to be speedy or own a super racing bike. There will be many other first timers out on the day so you won’t be alone.
Closing date for entries is 12 June 2022.
We have booked our wonderful Lyndhurst Community Centre as the HQ were there will be lots of tea, coffee and cake on offer, plus a prize presentation where all competitors will receive a memento. We also have many spot prizes on offer thanks to our sponsors.
I am living with ME and have been raising awareness and boosting funds for vital research into this condition since 2016. All profits from the event will be donated to the ME Associations Ramsay Research Fund.
To enter please use the following links below:
For any questions email mary.corbett7@btinternet.com
April Segment of the Month report
Last month's segment in the New Forest favoured the early movers: strong easterly winds made it hard for those who waited until the end of the month. This month’s winners were Debbie Hallett and Will Weynberg in the female and male categories, along with Isabella Hall as the only U16 female entrant. We’re hoping for more competition for her as the season progresses
May's Strava Segment
This month is a flat one on Poles Lane just outside of Winchester. https://www.strava.com/segments/1056573. If the wind stays in the East, there could be some fast times. Who will play their joker?
And it's not too late to join the fun. Full instructions on how to join are here
Strava Segment of the Month table for April
Strava segment of the month competition
Introduction
This competition will run from April 2022 until October 2022 and is open to all Sotonia club members.
Each month will feature a different segment, within the typical riding range of Sotonia members. There will be a variety of segments, including 2 hill climbs, 3 rollers and 2 flat segments.
Champions will be announced in four categories:
- Overall points winner: female
- Overall points winner: male
- Overall points winner: female U16
- Overall points winner: male U16
Riders must be under 16 on the first day of the competition (1 April 2022) in order to be eligible for the U16 category.
Event rules
- To enter the competition, you must join the Sotonia Strava segment of the month Strava club: https://www.strava.com/clubs/SSOTM2022
- Record your ride at any time during the relevant month, but before 1800 on the penultimate day of the month*.
- All rides must be solo and on a regular road bike (or gravel bike if you prefer!). No TT bikes, no leadouts, no e-bikes.
- In the event of two identical times by riders in the same category, points will be awarded to both riders.
- Ride the segment as many times as you want: only your fastest ride will count.
- Sotonia’s insurance with Cycling UK covers the club’s third party liability; however, all riders are:
- required to obey the rules of the road
- advised to gain their own personal cycling insurance
- The organiser’s decision is final in all cases.
* Note that the cut off time is 1800 on the penultimate day, not the last day of the month. This is to allow us time to analyse the data and award points before the monthly stats roll over.
Points allocation
Points can be earned in any or all of three ways:
- Fastest time. Points will be awarded to the fastest 15 in each of the four gender/age categories, in descending order: 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
- Joker. Each rider has one joker to play across the season. Examine the segments in the competition and work out which segment you think you will perform best in. Playing your joker will multiply your points score for that month by 150% (half numbers will be rounded up). You must play your joker in the first 3 days of the month. Send Tim Cooke an email on info@sotonia.co.uk with the subject title “Segment of the month joker” and your name in the body of the message, but make sure you do it in the first 3 days of the month. If your email is received after the end of the third day, your joker will not count.
- Consistency. If you complete segments in two consecutive months, you earn 2 bonus points. In three consecutive months: 3 bonus points. In four: 4 etc. If you miss a month, the ticker resets and you can start earning again by riding in 2 consecutive months.
Results
Results will be posted on the Sotonia Facebook site and the Sotonia website each month, to show the achievements each month and the current competition winner
The segments
April
Red Shoot roller. 1.7 km of rolling road through a beautiful part of the Forest. Reward yourself shortly afterwards by a well earned pint at the Red Shoot pub.
May
Poles Lane Westerly. 3.5km of lovely flat road just south of Winchester. Find yourself a nice westerly wind and settle in.
June
Cow Drove Hill. The first of the climbs. Just under 500 metres at just under 9% just outside of Kings Somborne. This will make your legs burn.
July
Flat on Forest Road. Something to help your legs recover after June’s hill climb. 2.5km of flat, out near Roger Penny Way. Can you steal Red Walters’ KoM?
August
Longstock park roller. Transport yourself back to a bygone age in this forgotten backwater. Actually not so forgotten: it’s got a lovely Waitrose cafe up near the top! 1.8km at an average 1.3%.
September
Beacon Hill. This will test who’s kept their form going over the summer holidays. 1.6km at 6% will make you wish you’d kept up the interval training.
October
Rhinefield Drive. What a beautiful road to finish the season on. 5km at an average 0.2% (but don’t be deceived - there are some uphill bits).
November
Time to rest up and plan your assault on next season’s competition.
And one last thing
If you’ve got some favourite segments, please let us know on info@sotonia.co.uk. If your segment is selected for the 2023 segment of the month competition, we’ll reward you with 5 bonus points to start the season! Each segment must be:
- safe (no right turns, limited traffic, decent sight lines)
- within riding distance of a typical Sotonia rider
Tim Cooke
Sotonia e-racing teams excel
Zwift Racing League
Seven teams entered and rode in this season’s Zwift Racing League (ZRL; 8 week season, starting Tuesday 11 January), with riders across all experiences and abilities. ZRL uses Zwift’s category system which allocates watts/kg, ranking from the lowest category (D) through C, B and A to A+ (although A+ riders are grouped in the same leagues as A riders). Sotonia has:
- One women’s D team: Sotonia Derailleurs
- Two women’s C teams: Sotonia Cadence & Sotonia Cranks
- One women’s B team: Sotonia Bullets
- Two men’s B teams: Sotonia Bees & Sotonia Blaze
- One men’s A team: SotoniAs
Special thanks are due to the team captains. There’s a lot of last minute chasing and problem solving involved in this, so we want to particularly thank:
Hannah Griffiths for Bullets, Amy Thorpe for Cadence, Vikki Sutcliffe for Cranks, Sarah Austin for Derailleurs, Tim Cooke for SotoniAs, Russell Speight for Bees and Alastair Cooper for Blaze.
In total, we had 57 riders representing Sotonia across the season (a reasonable proportion of the Sotonia women’s riders were temporary honorary Sotonians, but originally from Venta). Standout rider for the season was Will Weynberg, but there were some committed performances across all the teams. SotoniAs were the highest performing team across the season, finishing second and earning automatic promotion to the highest possible community league across their global time zone.
League positions are shown in the table below. The next season starts in April, but it seems very likely that we will have fewer teams entered, due to riders choosing to ride outside across the summer months.
Interclub Zwift team time trial
We hosted our first ever interclub event on Zwift on Tuesday 8 March. This was a team time trial handicap race between Sotonia and VC Venta, using the Clubs facility on Zwift (we have a Sotonia CC club set up). 10 teams entered: five Sotonia teams (of which one was a single rider, and one was a women’s team), and five Venta teams (of which one was a women’s teams). The handicap system worked relatively well, but not perfectly and we discovered that Zwift time was different from real internet time, when there was some discrepancy over people’s start times. Nevertheless, type II fun was had by all, and we’ve agreed that we’ll do something similar again towards the end of the summer. Results as follows:
Round 13, Miche Wessex CX League, Crow
And so the curtain falls on an action packed cyclocross season in challenging times - the fact that it happened at all is a testament to the incredible hard work by all the volunteers who make this great league happen.
We journeyed to Crow in the New Forest in late January for the final round of the Wessex League jointly hosted by Bournemouth Arrow, Bournemouth Jubilee Wheelers, New Forest CC and Poole Wheelers.
The theme of a mostly dry winter (except Romsey of course) continued with spring-like conditions and a course that wound its way over the undulating meadows of Gaddens Close Farm and into the woods for some flowing singletrack action.
Sotonia highlights included youth success for Freddie Trosh and James Sutton - 2nd and 3rd U8 boys. Matilda Wilks, Eve Carline and Jaya Martingale all making the U10 girls top five with Billy Dyer fifth U10 boy despite a flat tyre. Thomas Wilks and Sophie Jacobs 2nd and 4th in their U12 races. Izzy Hall finished her U14 season strongly with 2nd place in the race and overall standings. Thomas Allen and Niclas Olley were closely matched again in their U14 race, taking 6th and 7th in the race, but also inseparable in the league table; finishing 4th and 5th overall. In the U16s Louis Kirk was top club finisher in 12th place.
In the adult events, Tom Budden and Jon Hall had very good races in the v40 and v50 men, both coming fourth - Jon securing 3rd in the overall v50 classification. Gemma Wilks held her familiar fifth place in the senior women (3rd overall) as we welcomed yet more Sotonia cross newbies - Caroline Trosh and Eve Finlayson. Phil Wilks rounded the day off with 12th in the senior men's race.
The final team tallies also made excellent reading for Sotonia...
U14s: A team - 2nd place, B team: 4th place, C team - 7th, D team -10th.
U16s: A team - 6th place, B team: 14th place, C team - 15th.
We're particularly proud this year of being able to field not one but three women's teams as participation has really shot up, the A team: 2nd, B team: 11th place, C team - 13th.
V50 men: A team - 2nd place, B team: 12th place, C team - 25th.
V40 men: A team - 4th place, B team: 10th place, C team - 15th.
Senior men: A team - 5th place, B team: 10th place.
Well done to the 91 club cross riders young or old, new or experienced. Thanks to all the support crews too - literally keeping those wheels turning! ??
Round 12, Miche Wessex CX League, Southampton
History tells us the Geoff Shergold Memorial Cyclocross hosted by Crabwood CC is never dry in January - Geoff would have approved. But that's what we got for round 12 of the Miche Wessex CX League at Southampton Sports Centre. Fast racing with a dash of slippery mud thrown in and fields were still large as riders chased late season points for the overall standings.
Sotonia youth kicked things off well with highlights from Freddie Trosh and James Sutton second and third U8 boys, Matilda Wilks, Eve Carline and Jaya Martingale all making the U10 girls top five with Billy Dyer third U10 boy. In the U12s, Tom Wilks took the win in a thrilling sprint finish, Sophie Jacobs third U12 girl. In the U14s, Izzy Hall won the girls race, Tom Allen and Niclas Olley third and fourth in the boys. The U16s saw Lucy Phillips in 3rd place.
The adult races also got off to a flying start – Tom Budden making a successful return in the v40 men, with a second place. Gemma Wilks followed up with another strong ride for fifth in the senior women and Jon Hall came fourth in the v50 men.
As for the overall standings, things are tight going into the final race at Crow in the New Forest. Tom Allen sits in fourth place in the U14s eyeing a top three finish, Izzy Hall leads her U14 category. Gemma Wilks sits in third place in the senior women, Jon Hall third in the v50 men's league and Phil Wilks seventh in the senior men. For the teams it's just as tight at the top – Sotonia U14s and womens "A" teams sit in second, with the v50 Sotonia men holding a narrow lead in that classification.
Great riding and good luck for the final round everyone!
Photos: Pitchside Paul
Southern Regional CX Championships, Keynsham
It was a bitterly cold day at Keynsham near Bristol in the shadow of the old chocolate factory for the Western and Southern Regional Cyclocross Championships. The event hosted by ShamXross brought together some of the top riders from the Western and Wessex cyclocross leagues to battle the mud and obstacles including steep banks, a huge spiral, rollers and a sandpit.
The youth races started with a hard frost on the frozen ground but as the sun rose, a slick top layer formed on the course to send riders sliding on the flat grass corners. Team Sotonia still managed a fine haul of results and podiums and from the first race, with Freddie Trosh who took the U8 boys championship race. In the U10s Matilda Wilks and Jaya Martingale were first and second girls, Billy Dyer taking second place boy. Sophie Jacobs and Tom Wilks also second and third in the U12s. The U14 race saw Izzy Hall pick up another silver medal. Jon Dudley rounded off the podiums with his second place in the v60 men's race.
Other notable performances were Miles Horner and Louis Kirk with season bests to come 5th and 6th in the U16s and Jon Hall (4th v50).
Great riding everyone!
Provisional results:
https://www.racetecresults.com/results.aspx?CId=16665&RId=3305
Photos: Pitchside Paul
Round 8, Miche Wessex CX League, Newbury
We’re being spoilt with new venues in the 2021-22 Wessex league season - this week we took a tour of the vineyards at Cobbs Farm (complete with double decker bus café) near Hungerford for round 8 hosted by Newbury Velo.
The energy sapping course scurried up, down and across the chalky North Downs slopes in a return to dry conditions after last week’s heavy mud. Climbing from the start, riders even tackled a hole in the hedgerow as they wound their way to the top of a Strava art thumb before the four “fingers” of the switchback descent and a tricky set of barriers hiding round a corner at the bottom of a downhill section. With no Central league race scheduled, the location attracted plenty of that league’s “hitters” too as both v40 and v50 men’s races saw fields of nearly 100 riders each.
Sotonia kids got off to a flying start with a U8 win for Luke, 1st and 3rd for Matilda and Eva in the U10 girls, Billy 2nd place U10 boy. Tom and Sophie 2nd place U12 boy and girl. In the U14s, Izzy won the girls race with Tom and Niclas 2nd and 3rd in theirs. Miles was our top u16 finisher.
For the adults – husband, wife and series leaders, Gemma and Phil Wilks finished 6th and 8th in the senior races. Tom Budden took third place in the v40s and Jon Hall 9th in the v50 men.
This week also saw the first sight of the team league tables and it makes good reading for team Sotonia...
- 1st Senior Women's team (awesome to go from no Sotonia women's teams to three this season!)
- 1st v50 Men's team
- 1st U14 Youth team
- 2nd place v40 Men's team
- 2nd place Senior Men's team
Great riding everyone!
