Team Friday shatter the hill, then crawl home on the flat

Three new best times in one ride, and all three came inside a couple of minutes of climbing. Gibson St Climb went first, in 0:38, six seconds quicker than ever before. The trimmed version, cut short by the traffic lights, fell next at 0:33, a fifteen-second improvement. Then the Half Climb, all fourteen seconds of it, dropped too. Whatever else happened on this ride, that stretch of road has never been ridden better by Team Friday.

The rest of the journey told a different story, and it told it in order. The bridge crossing came and went without fuss, wind at the back for once instead of in the teeth, sunshine catching the water below. Shields Road, usually a drag on the way home, actually came in quicker than last time, which felt like a small mercy given what followed. Chilli Road Dash Reversed and the long haul out past Four Lane Ends both slipped compared to recent efforts, the legs clearly spent after the Gibson Street fireworks.

And then Benton Road. Eleven attempts at this one now, and this was the slowest of them all, 46% off the best time ever recorded there. The gulls were doing their thing overhead, the low sun was straight down the road, and none of it mattered because the tank was simply empty. It is the sort of number that would worry a team with something to prove.

Team Friday do not have anything to prove. They remain top of the general classification, 86 seconds per 10 km clear of Team Wednesday, unmoved by a ride that was their slowest of the three run home so far. Twenty-four stages and more at the summit now, and a day built on three personal bests and one horror show on Benton Road does nothing to shift that.