After a large contingent of the CCC did the Marmotte last year, two riders felt that they had room for improvement on the times they had achieved - Dave Mayman had a number of injury issues which interfered with his training for the event and Gary de Gruchy blew up big style on the Telegraphe and lost loads of time as a result.

As you are all probably aware the Marmotte represents one of the hardest challenges that is open to amateurs such as ourselves, 110 miles over the Glandon, Telegraphe, Galibier and Alpe d'Huez to clock up over 5,000m of climbing in the day.

A change to the format of the event was made by the organisers due to the number of accidents that had occurred on the descent of the Glandon in 2009. They decided it was going to be neutralised, with your time stopping at the top and starting again at the bottom. There was a sting in the tail regarding this more of which later...

After a week of pessimistic weather forecasts and doomsayers warning us of thunder storms and dangerous descents the day dawned mild and calm. This set alarm bells ringing for what the day was going to turn into and fortunately we both had the ultra lightweight club tops which more resemble a string vest than a jersey.

Both riders had good rides with no issues other than the searing heat, much hotter than the previous year - my Polar registered 42 0 C on the Alpe.

Dave clocked a gold standard time of 8hrs 25mins to knock 30mins off last years result and just outside his target of getting into the top 1000 with a placing of 1054.

Gary set a new pb of 9hrs 39mins to finish 2424 - 22mins better than his time in 2004 - but an agonising 3mins outside gold standard time.

As mentioned earlier there was a bit of uncertainty regarding the neutralisation of the Glandon descent. It turned out that the deduction of time only affected your positioning in the results not your overall time for what standard you received - had Gary been aware of this he wouldn't have descended as conservatively as he did (Dave had 30mins deducted whereas Gary had 39 - normally Gary is the quicker descender).

Both of us have now done the Marmotte 3 times yet these results have left us both wanting to come back for more - I'm getting closer to that sub 8hr ride (surely only need to lose half a stone for that?), and Gary to get that gold standard to shut Simon up...