Cyclists line up for Blackburn team trial

10:51am Thursday 15th May 2008

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The Blackburn and District CTC will be promoting their annual 2-up Team Time Trial this evening, on a course based on the A6/A586 north of Preston.

Over recent years, this event has developed into a mini-Classic with a following across the whole of the North West.

Event organiser Dave Collinge, of Twiston near Downham, has received the entries of 43 teams who will be staring at two minute intervals from 7pm onwards at Barton on the A6 road.

Our East Lancs clubs will be well represented with the North Lancs Road Club fielding fives teams of two riders, the Pendle Forest Cycling Club have two pairs entered, the Rossendale Road Club have also two teams and Michael Ellerton of Burnley and Dave Metcalfe of Barnoldswick ride for their new Team Swift outfit.

Father and son pairing of Frank Kerry of Egerton and son Martin, of Blackburn, ride in the Lancashire Road Club colours and two more of our local riders, Julian Markham of Blackburn and come-back rider Jim Nolan of Clitheroe, will wear the Preston colours.

This year the headquarters have moved to the Sports Academy at Myerscough College close to the finish point on St Michaels Road at Bilsborrow.

l Peter Greenwood of Burnley rode an excellent race from Kendal to the top of Shap on Saturday to finish second overall behind new course record holder Dominic Munnelly of KB Cycles, whilst Dave Hargreaves of Blackburn won the Vet60+ award which he repeated the following day in a 38-mile LVRC road race in North Wales.

l Frank Kerry was the top performer in the North Lancashire Veterans' 10-mile time trial last week when he easily won the event overall based on age standard by clocking an excellent time of 23 minutes 55 seconds at the age of 72.

Fastest ride of the day came from Burnley's Michael Ellerton who completed the distance in 21 mins 32 secs at the age of 47.

Kerry went on to clock an amazing 56min 25-mile time on Saturday evening in Yorkshire, only a handful of seconds short of a new National Record for his age.

l The Rossendale 10-mile time trial at Hapton had a close finish with Paul Warrener (25-10) beating team-mate Roy Flanagan by one second for first place and Rob Dickinson of North Lancs.

Road Club (25-20) beating his team-mate Mark Bateman by one second for third slot.

The Pendle Forest 10-mile at Thornton in Craven was won by Brian Hickey (PF) in 24-20 beating Chris Wood (PF) 24-37 and Steve Singleton(PF) 25-00.