Good legs fuelled by a double paella ready meal and the presence of his dad on Father’s Day was all it took for Yorkshire rider Adam Duggleby to smash the British 100-mile time trial record last weekend.
The Addform VLV-Garden Shed UK rider’s stunning 3:10:48 lowered John Archibald‘s previous mark by more than two minutes and saw the record continue on its slow march towards a sub-three-hour time.
Set on the E2/100C course on the A14 on the Cambridgeshire-Suffolk border, the 41-year-old had travelled down the night before and, staying in an Airbnb, made do with a brace of microwave meals in preparation.
“I had like a paella thing, literally like a ready meal, but I had two of them – you know what the portions are like – and I thought, well, that’s enough carbs, I’ll be alright with that,” he tells Cycling Weekly. It being Father’s Day and with his dad there too – a ubiquitous presence at Duggleby’s races – and a fine day out on the course, all the stars were aligned.
“I’d have been annoyed if I hadn’t got a record, I would have felt like I’d just wasted his day, really,” says Duggleby. “But he doesn’t mind coming and watching me anyway, to be honest. He pretty much always comes to the long distance stuff.”
Talking of long-distance stuff, the idea of riding a century against the clock would boggle the mind of many: so much focus for such a long time. But when you’re going as fast as Duggleby, it almost becomes a different event.
“Most cyclists at a certain level are doing three-hour rides, four hours, five hours all the time. So a three-hour ride, it’s not that long,” he says. “You’re concentrating and calculating in your head all the time, whether you’re going too hard, going too easy, when should you drink…? You’re obviously looking where you’re going and making sure you don’t hit a pothole, and knowing where the next junction is that you’ve got to come off… you’re just constantly thinking, so the three hours flies past, to be honest.”
Duggleby is a former Paralympic tandem pilot and won medals on the road and track with stoker Steve Bate across the Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2021 Games – including gold in the TT and pursuit in Brazil.
He and Bate also hold numerous British tandem time trial records, including at 10, 25 and 50 miles.
At 41 years old, Duggleby had wondered whether he was too old to go for a new 100 record last weekend, but it didn’t take long to realise that he was on a good day after averaging 31.6mph for the first 30 miles.
He suffered a bad patch mid ride, but managed to tackle it with a drink and a nootropics gel to come back stronger than ever. “After I’d had that, I felt really good, to be honest,” he says. “I felt like the best I’ve ever felt at the end of the 100 – the motivation of actually knowing I was on for the record, and knowing I wasn’t too far from the end. I know an hour sounds like a long way from the end, but in the 100 it feels like you’re almost there.”
His ride ultimately saw him record a 19:05 10-mile time trial, 10 times over: most riders would consider just one an incredible feat.
Duggleby hopes to put his form to use at numerous national championship time trials across the summer: perhaps he will add another record to his already crowded quiver.
