Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2021 Stage 5

The Cycling: Stage 5 is a Time Trial and is just 27.2km long and starts in Changè and ends in Laval.  The 30 year old French lady who caused the big crash on Saturday, Stage 1, has finally handed herself in and is currently in custody at a police station in  Landerneau. On Sunday, the Finistère gendarmie announced the opening of a judicial investigation into "involuntary injuries with disability not exceeding three months by a deliberate violation of an obligation of safety or prudence". She could face up to two years in prison and a fine of $35,000.  The race organisers are no longer looking to prosecute her but she's not off the hook yet as any of the riders could still sue her themselves due to injuries, damaged and wrecked bikes etc, especially the three that had to abandon the race due to injuries received, medical bills, loss of earnings and future earnings as they will probably have to pull out of other races too until injuries are healed. Tadej Pogačar won the stage.  

Team Challenge: "Time Trial - today it is just you and the clock.  The fastest time trial that the Tour de France has seen was set by Rohan Dennis in 2015; 9 miles in 14 minutes and 56 seconds.  Now that is a lot of spinning!

Your challenge today is to see what length single you can spin in 14 minutes and 56 seconds.  No plying necessary!  On your marks, set, spin!".

What I planned to do and what I achieved: I am doing the challenge today, whoooo hooooo.  I am spinning some Shetland in natural shade Moorit, 100g bump and 25g that was in British Breeds Sample pack, both from World of Wool.  I split the larger amount into two by holding the two ends together, finding the middle and separating into two equal amounts at that point.  Then with the sample amount, I split that into two the same way but then stretched each out to the same length as the larger bumps and spun both the sample and the larger bump at the same time in each case so that the fibres mixed.

I managed to spin 32.56m in the 14 minutes 56 seconds allowed, timed on my stop watch.  Taking the single off the bobbin onto my niddy-noddy, tying it, taking it off the niddy-niddy to measure it and then feeing it back onto the bobbin was great fun, NOT!  The issue is that there is so much energy in the spun single that it just becomes one big twisty-twirly-knotting-up-on-itself mess.  When you ply with another single, which means you twist the fibre in the opposite way to which it is twisted as a single, it removes some of that energy.

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Once the measured single was back on the bobbin I was able to finish spinning that half of the fibre and then spin the second single.