Kim Little put in a great ride at the weekend in TLI’s Sandie Radford Memorial race on the New Forest.  The race is a hilly 35 miles all-categories event, with plenty of Elite and First cat riders taking part, and this year a change of route had everyone tackling the Piper’s Waite climb four times.

Inevitably this hill was where the race blew apart, save for a few early stragglers left out the back of the 50-strong field.  First time up, and the lead group was quickly down to around 15 or so riders, with James Chant, Nigel Brown and Liam Teesdale hanging in there until about halfway up before losing contact.  The front group then split again over the top, with Kim joining the front selection.  Nigel and James and a couple of others were soon together to make a third group on the road.
Just after the second ascent of Piper’s Waite, last year’s winner Rowan Horner (VC St Raphael), Phil Reynolds (Peter Hansford Cycles) and James Gilfillan (Velo Refined) attacked and were away, staying clear until the end where Reynolds just pipped Horner on the line.
Kim came home in an excellent fifth place, one minute 36 down on the winner, and collected two primes along the way as well.  The group containing Nigel and James grew a little as they collected dropped riders from the leaders, they came up the finishing hill in ones and twos with Nigel 19th and James 24th, both classified at five minutes down.
Liam kept plugging away and came home in 30th of the 43 finishers, 11 minutes 10 behind Reynolds.
Eamonn Deane has lots of photos on his blog here
In the local time trials, Yeovil CC had their Open on the A303 10 mile course.  Chris Mullett is already getting back to the good forom he had last season, recording a 25.33 for 57th place while Don Tanner had his first outing of the year, a 26.07 giving him 61st place.  Jeff Jones just missed the course record with 19.58.
There was also another EDCA round on Sunday, this time on the 27 kms Gallows Hill-Moreton-Wool-Gallows Hill circuit.  Vince Hounsome had another good result in the series, finishing in seventh with a time of 40.20.  Gary Dighton (Poole Wheelers) won in 36.42.