The 2026 season has begun!
Outlaw Half Nottingham never fails to put on a brilliant event with a super competitive British field.
4th Overall today just missing out on the podium. Very happy with my race. Onto back to back British Champs next!
Back to winning ways… apparently going the right way helps 👀😅
Headed down to Plymouth for Wednesday night’s S4/10 in some pretty wild conditions. Left Barnstaple in strong winds and heavy showers genuinely wondering whether the race would even be on.
Tried calling the organiser to check… only to realise later that we’d actually called next week’s race organiser thanks to @oscarjarrett_ admin 🤝
By the time we realised our mistake, we were nearly at Buckfastleigh and thankfully it was drier and the race was on 📈
My warm-up became a case of dodging showers, but sensations were really good. One of those evenings where I actually had to hold back rather than chase the numbers.
Made the switch to a shallow front wheel because the crosswinds were savage. Straight away knew it was the right call when the bike stayed completely planted heading to the line.
Set off controlled, pushed on over the first climb, recovered on the return descent and saved the big effort for the drag back to the finish.
The ride felt solid, but you’re never sure until you see the scoreboard back at HQ.
So I was really pleased to take the win ahead of Donald Brooks and Steve Lampier.
Interesting comparing it to the same race last year too. Riders were around 1:10 slower across the board in the tougher conditions. I rode 18:39 last year and 19:29 this year off almost identical power.
I wonder how fast I’d have gone on last years float night? 🤔
Most importantly though, it finally felt like things had fully clicked back into place again and the setup felt familiar to last years. The comparison photos confirmed my hunch ….can you spot the difference? 👀
#cyclingtimetrials #nopinz #giant #timetrial
CTT National TTT 🏴 🏆
Fun packed 24 hrs in 🏴, with a last minute team change (thank you Maria!), we made the journey up to Ayrshire.
Kept it nice and smooth, especially given we hadn’t had chance to ride together before the day. Super riding as always from Maria and @laura.rides.bikes !
Nice to play a small part in @teambottrill keeping the TTT cup for another year!
Now to address the bottom bracket issue which appeared to have been adding about 30W resistance towards the end of the race 🫢😯
Huge thanks as always to our lovely sponsors @nopinz for the speedy kit!
A long journey up to Scotland for the @cyclingtimetrials national team time trials hosted by the top blokes @gtrreturntolife
This year’s event was on the WW31/02 course, a super fast and super flat 31mile dual carriageway. It was a course that really suited the big powerhouses of the discipline. We were greeted by an unusually nice day for Scotland, light winds, sunshine, but a bit chilly for us soft southerners.
We had a plan and executed it as best we could. Guided by @bottrillmatthew@f4rmerrob would tare it up on the downhills and flats whilst @dylan_rg04 and @sarge.jaco would take control of the corners and ‘up hills’. Our effort saw us cross the line in 59 minutes and 29 seconds which earned us 3rd in the TT bike category and 4th overall. Our result left us wanting more but we worked well as a team and are happy with our performance.
As always thanks to the team’s great sponsors for making this possible. Matching @giantuk Trinitys @cadexcycling_uk Wheels @nopinz kit and @windwaveroad@ceramicspeed finishing touches had us feeling very professional
#smashitup #powerisnothingwithoutcontrol
F11/10 race report: caffeine, chaos and questionable navigation ☕️🫠
Made the 4.5-hour trip up from North Devon last weekend feeling quietly confident of at least giving my PB a nudge.
Stayed overnight in the @nopinz van in a pub car park, arrived ridiculously early at HQ because I had no idea what the parking situation would be, got set up, had breakfast… and then probably had far too much coffee.
Normally Tori is with me and we share the espresso pot. This time she wasn’t. So naturally I drank the lot myself. ☕️
This may explain what happened next.
Warm up done, legs actually felt really good, and I rolled off feeling surprisingly sharp. Didn’t know the course particularly well, although I had driven it that morning at 7am (pre coffee… possibly another issue).
Anyway, got to the first roundabout much quicker than expected and in the excitement I somehow managed to take the wrong exit. #Wally
20 seconds gone turning round.
Then in the panic to get going again I dropped the chain.
At that point it would’ve been easy to mentally check out, but with eight miles still to race I tried to reset and salvage the ride. Unfortunately the big adrenaline spike and panic definitely caught up with me later on and I faded pretty hard towards the finish.
Still ended up 5th out of 150 riders with an 18:56, which on paper isn’t terrible… but knowing it was probably a PB ride without the scenic detour makes it a frustrating one.
With the top roundabouts now permanently burned into my memory. I’ll hopefully be back in July to put it right.
And next time @toriloze is definitely coming with me to ration the espresso and supervise my navigation 👀
#timetrials #nopinz #espeesso #excuses
Not quite the weekend we had planned, but that’s bike racing for you.
Yesterday’s event in Wales was abandoned after another rider crashed, so I didn't get the chance to start. Always frustrating but the priority is that everyone’s okay. Looks like I'll have to come back another time 😁.
Today was a different story - happy to take the win at the VCB 10 mile TT 🥇 with a 21:34. Not the freshest legs after all the travelling, but sometimes you’ve just got to dig in and make it count. Super nice to see @abzdoestri after 🥰
On to the next one 💪
Thanks as always to @bottrillmatthew@nopinz for the support 🙏
📸Michael Watson
@sun.city.coffee@voomnutrition@ezgains.co.uk@magicshine_uk
#timetrial #teambottrill #cycling #smashitup #raceday
Great evening out on Thursday at the first @teammk_crits
The race started off gentle which allowed me to prep for a couple attacks.
The first one was partially successful creating a break in then group. After a couple laps I managed to go again this time getting away and creating a 3 man break.
I stayed here for the rest of the race where we all worked together to grow the gap to over a minute.
It finally came to a sprint finish where I managed to come second and missed out on first by .5 of a second.
Great evening for some racing and looking forward to the next one.
Supported by:
Glasses and kit @sixsummitclothing@salice_uk
Fueled by @drinkhydropower@healf
Riding for @teambottrill@bottrillmatthew
Coached by @simon_beldon@gianttugby
Next up for my sponsor highlight is @nopinz 💥
I’ve have the pleasure of wearing Nopinz kit almost from the moment I started racing. From my days back at @ftpracingteam and later onto @teambottrill I can confidently say no other brand has done more of the UK TT scene than them!
From the early days wearing a Pro-1 Speed Suit, moving on to a custom fitted 3D scanned Flow Suit and then transferring those measurements onto my @teambottrill Hypersonic skinsuits. Finally culminating is this year’s prototype skinsuit, more on that later…
Blake and his team have constantly raised the bar, listened to rider feedback and pushed to make super fast custom kit as accessible as possible. It’s been a pleasure to race in their kit and watch it develop over the years. I look forward to continuing to work with them to make this kit and my racing as fast as possible!
#smashitup
#nopinz
#teambottrill
#timetrial
#bicyclemaintenancethewayitshouldbe
Team Bottrill Nopinz Weekend round up,
CTT National Circuit Champs saw the majority of the team in the top 10 which was a solid performance for the first national event of the season. With Tom Lee 5th, Rob Francis 6th, Jake Sargent 8th, Blake Pond 9th and winning his age category 👊 Dylan Griffiths 12th, Keith Dorling & Richard Mellor joint 45th overall and Keith winning his age group.
Onto Team Bottrill Nopinz Women’s, Laura Davies taking the win in a time of 43:16, great work and Laura Pittard taking 5th.
………..
Over to the VTTA East Mids 10TT, Jen Clegg taking second in the ladies event overall and breaking her National age group record. Awesome work. Matt Utterley taking 3rd in a time of 19.27 👊
……………..
In other events MBPC coached rider Victoria Kenny taking 2nd place in the Majorca 312 in a time of 9:30:19, great accomplishment especially with a fall, she’s hardcore.
……………
Solid start to the National season- Let’s go #cycling #timetrialtuesday #teamwork
CTT National Circuit Champs 😄
Really enjoyed this one! Legs felt great, head was good. Fun, technical circuit although on reflection would have been better to have ridden rather than driven the day before as lots of places where a bit more time could have been saved! But overall a good day out 😀 P5 women.
Seem to be on a run of 2nds recently both at Bristol South on 29th March and Bath CC 10 on 12th April 😅 Always things to improve on but very much enjoying the process at present!
Looking forward to the next few weeks!
National Closed Circuit Championships, Costa del Dowsett (Essex).
Giving the youngsters a chance by riding round on the hoods… I wish. 👀😅
With a packed start sheet, I went into this one knowing a top ten would be a really tough ask.
If I’m honest, I wasn’t feeling 100% on form this weekend, but having been lucky enough to get a course recon from @alexdowsett , I had that local knowledge and was able to carry good speed through the corners, along with knowing where to push and where to conserve.
My @teambottrill@giantuk Trinity was perfectly suited to this kind of parcours—extremely light and agile It gave me some additional confidence in the corners.
All told this meant I ended up getting a really solid ride for relatively low power.
9th overall (and importantly, 1st vet) 😅
On to the next one—VTTA National 10 on the F11… 18:31 to beat. 📈
📸 Martin Cooper @omnirocker
