NEW Forest Cycling club's Martin Beale improved four minutes on his 2006 time in the Bournemouth Jubilee Wheelers' 42km hilly time trial between Wool and Lulworth on Sunday. His time of 1-9-32 was good enough for 14th place.

Veteran clubmate Terry Jefferies also improved on last year's time and clocked 1-13-26 for 26th position.

Winner was Paul Jones of the promoting club with a sparkling 1-2-51, five seconds faster than team-mate Richard Eastham who was second.

The previous Sunday, junior Andy Rogers had his first taste of bunched riding in the fourth category race in the Omega series at Thruxton.

Because of the severe gusting wind on the exposed motor race circuit the laps were cut by two to 10.

After seven laps the bunch fractured on the hill and Andy had to fight hard to get back to the main group for two-thirds of a lap.

"On the 10th lap I was just holding on behind the main bunch, which is about where I finished," he said.

"All in all I thoroughly enjoyed my first race, and the experience will hopefully pay dividends when I do it again."

In his first third category race, held over 14 laps, team-mate Craig Humphreys finished just outside the top 10 and said it was one of the toughest races he had ever ridden.

New Forest CC veterans Chris Mills and Keith Mitchell competed in the Beaulieu Duathlon based at the National Motor Museum.

Keith said: "Conditions were cold with a north-easterly wind which made the cycle leg on the local forest roads particularly hard going. The runs were on tracks within the Beaulieu Estate."

Chris took part in the main event: a 10km run, 30km on the bike and a 5km run to finish and clocked a total time of 2hr 17mins 39secs.

Keith, the only competitor aged more than 60 went for the "sprint" event of 5km, 15km and 5km and recorded 1-29-5.

5:00pm Thursday 5th April 2007

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