Hutchinson: new '10' record was a surprise

PROLIFIC time trial record breaker Michael Hutchinson has spoken of his surprise that he set a new 10-mile competition record on Sunday, when he lowered his own record to 17-45 on the V718 in East Yorkshire.

Hutchinson, 38 and based in London, slashed 12 seconds from his own two-year-old record in the Team Swift charity 10, despite it being only his second ride in two months after a hectic summer of work commitments.

"I wasn't running a stop watch so I didn't know that I had done the record until I got back to the HQ," he said afterwards. "It wasn't my aim to go for the record, I've had quite a distracted summer with working at the Tour and the Olympics, so I was only going there for a race, not for a record."

Hutchinson worked on these events for both Eurosport and Cycling Weekly as well as various punditry roles on TV on radio. On Friday he made several news appearances to discuss the latest Lance Armstrong developments.   

"I've only done one race since June, at Blenheim Palace last week, so I wasn't thinking about going particularly fast," he said. "Clearly it was a decent day so I wanted to press on, but it was more about beating the other guys there than going for the record.

"I was expecting to be about 30 seconds slower than that but it was a good day for it so maybe I should've known better. I've done very few fast races this year, so maybe my ability to judge how I'm going has gone!

"My training has been patchy this summer. I've been doing what I can, but it's not been as consistent as it has been in the past few years.

"You always think you can go a little bit faster, but you never think you can go a lot faster. I always think about taking the odd second off the record, but not larger chunks than that.

"It's always a case of doing a good ride on a good day, and those two things come together very rarely."

Although he has now done the two fastest official 10-mile time trial rides in the UK, Hutchinson thinks it could still be easily beaten.  

"I'm sure there's more to come off that record because I'm a very long way from being the fastest guy in the country," he said. "If someone like Alex Dowsett for example was to have a good ride on a good day on that course, he would take the record.

"I might be able to go a little quicker, but in reality that's probably as quick as I'm ever going to go."

Related links

British time trial round-up