TWO of our local cycling clubs used Sunday's North Lancs Time Trial Association 25 mile event on a course near Garstang as their club Championship at the distance for the 2003 season.

Regular winner Fraser Snape of Simonstone was easily best of his North Lancs Road Club colleagues when he clocked a time of exactly 58 minutes beating the Blackburn trio of Dave Hargreaves (1h 02m 07s), Vinnie Riding (1h 02m 17s) and Mal Gill (1h 03m 43s) into second, third and fourth places.

The Rossendale Road Club Title went for the first time to Waterfoot's Derek Schofield who clocked 1h 01m 15s beating Roy Flanagan (Haslingden)1h 04m 51s, Adrian Watts (Waterfoot)1h 09m 02s and Chris Smith (Rawtenstall) 1h 09m 05s into the next three places.

On the previous day and also at Garstang, Ian Stott of the Blackburn and District CTC rode one of his best 10 mile events to date despite only arriving at Liverpool airport at 4am the same day and catching a couple of hours sleep.

Ian's time of 20m 55s was best of 70 competitors and backed by Carl Helliwell of Great Harwood in third place with 22m 24s and Ian's mother Anne Stott (27m 57s) the CTC club took second team award.

Keeping it in the family, Ian's sister Tara Stott clocked 29m 01s to take the first junior lady award whilst Simonstone's Rob Greenwood of the North Lancs Road Club took second junior male prize with 24m 37s.

At National level, the Preston Wheelers team have retained their British Best All Rounder (BBAR) Team Title with their top rider Gethin Butler jumping into fifth place by improving in the final qualifier on Sunday and just going ahead of Chorley's John Morgan who finished overall sixth, while Paul Fleming of Walton-Le-Dale took the final place in the coveted top 12.

The BBAR was won by Kevin Dawson of Doncaster with a record average speed of 28.260mph but there is an interesting local connection in third place overall.

This slot was taken by southerner Zak Carr riding for apibikes.com who, although born in Norwich, has a father born and bred in Blackburn and they still have relatives living in the town.

It is only a few years ago that Zak, who is National 12 hour Champion and only last weekend was taking a second place in the highly rated Duo Normand in France on a tandem, was riding the 10 mile events on the old Clitheroe by-pass course when he visited Blackburn.

Paul Warrener promotes the long established Rossendale Road Club Open Hill Climb this Saturday morning when Dave Collinge, one of the National team champion trio of the Blackburn and District CTC, will go off last, and favourite, of 24 entrants.

The Course starts just off the A 646 (Glen View Road) at Burnley and climbs for 1000 metres to finish at Crown Point Road and has an average gradient of 14 per cent with the first rider starting at 10-01am and the rest at one minute intervals.