New 50-mile British champion and record holder John Archibald says he was originally targeting a fast time later in the season – before conditions came up trumps for a superfast 1:30:08 for the half-century in Monmouthshire, Wales.
Ridden on the R50/1B course on the A40 road, and still provisional at the time of writing, Archibald's time was a 23-second beating of Marcin Bialoblocki's 2018 record. It was the second of numerous records set by the Pole last decade to fall – both at Archibald's hands – the other being the 100-mile, broken last year with a stunning 3:12:58.
"I didn't actually know this course. The Spindata prediction for me was 1hr 33 and I thought, 'it can't [really] be that quick', so I put the record out of my mind."
Indeed, the A40 course, starting and finishing near Abergavenny is far from your typical pan-flat time trial record-breaking territory, with a robust 456m of elevation gain over its 50-mile distance.
"The first 10k were relatively flat on a dual carriageway," Archibald said, and then you turned off into a single carriageway, which sort of ran alongside the main dual carriageway. And so it was kind of lumpy up and down, but it just flowed very nicely. I think the fact the wind was really low helped. I mean, there was wind but nothing drastic."
He added: "Even though the hills were there and you were down below 40 kilometres an hour at some points, it still flowed quite nicely. And then on the way back down the hill, I was comfortably over 60k an hour for quite a long periods of time."
High temperatures and low air density also help him along a little, he reckons.
Once a full-time professional riding WorldTour races, Archibald says he now enjoys a more balanced lifestyle, working a job in digital marketing and fitting in racing for fun. While he may not be riding the hours he once did, he says he is "always refining the balance of what you can physically adapt and recover from".
This helps him maintain his considerable domestic time trialling palmarès, which once Sunday's ride is officially ratified, will amount to nine championship titles at the standard distances.
Archibald has no further imminent time trialling plans he says, and will not be defending his National 100-mile champion's title on 13 July.
