Cutting my teeth all over again

The later half of last season saw me do no racing what so ever. A demoralising Ras De Cymru 5-Day last summer saw me finish 3 places from dead last on home soil; I basically became a rolling parts wagon for the rest of my team by the 2nd day. After that I lost all motivation to train amongst 2 house moves and various financial struggles. However, retroactively, I have been awarded 1 point for the Team Time Trial. I'm not totally sure I deserve it given the circumstances; I was dragged down the first mile and a half of the course by probably the strongest man in Welsh Time Trailing, Richie Harris, and then dropped to limp my way back to finish. But I'll take it, so until the rankings get updated I am the highest scoring 3rd cat in the North-West. Silver lining found. Moving on.

This season is kicking off alot earlier than last year, my logic being; I need to re-learn some race craft and recondition myself to the kind of high intensity you can't recreate in training. Interestingly there is nothing in the way of Road Racing around Manchester this early in the season. Brief bit of searching and Google-mapping churned out a series of races up near Middlesbrough run by Velo29 Events.

The first round, in late January, was snowed off leaving a large field with free entry to the 2nd event. Perfect! Crit racing, early season nerves, larger than average peloton and massive differences in strength and handling ability across an E/1/2/3/4 field. The 4th cat support event had already seen an outing for the on hand ambulance crew.

The race was run as a Handicap over 15laps of Croft Circuit. Weather reports the previous day had shown temperatures of 2*C feels like 0*C, winds of 11mph gusting to 25mph. Grim cycling weather indeed. The race was back together within 3 laps. Not long after that the eventual winner, Jack Rees Achieve CC, and several others made the decisive attack that left the main field chasing a single point for 10th. Cross winds hampered any attempts I made to get a descent chase going because every time we hit the windy home straight or the long back straight there was a mass shirking of responsibility from the front dozen riders leavening me to drive through with no one on my wheel. Eventually I was resigned to the fact the bunch was going to be racing for 10^th. Basically the race became a passive and boring ride to the last lap. A WD-40 jersey mopped up the last points paying position while I placed 14^th. I know. Not amazing but better than expected.

The second race, I came prepared. The previous event had been a bit of a shambles. No real warm up, not enough food and not knowing the circuit or any other riders in the field made for a lonely ride. This time the turbo was packed along with a ton of pasta to boot for the 2 hour drive to the start. Half and hours warm up, then a few laps of the track to reacquaint myself with it. The whole day was a total polar opposite of last time. Mild (for February), light wind and a dry track, time to don the deep-sections and crank the pressures to 140psi.

From the off I was setting the pace leaving the bunch with a half hearted attack from the line just to see who was awake. This continued until I formed some ideas, Rock Racing and Blumilk seem keen but very few others. Handy as both teams were well stocked on riders. We settled into a high paced through-and-off and had the 4^th cat group insight by the end of the 3^rd lap. I made a leap of faith attempting to be the first rider to catch the 4^th cats alone while (hopefully) the two bunches behind would get tangled. They didn’t. Blumilk had drilled the pace to make sure I was pegged at no more than 7 seconds. Legs tested, feeling surprisingly good.

The following few laps consisted of more turn taking and coming to the intermediate sprint the E12 bunch was still no where to be seen. True to early indications Rock Racing and Blumilk had the bunch lined out for the sprint. A little bit of gentle leaning saw me slot into 3^rd inline round the final corner. My peripheral vision immediately offered up several indications it was sprint time and with relative ease it was over not another rider with a bikes length of me. Far from what I was expecting given my half a season away from racing.
 Within a lap of the sprint we were caught, the pace upped by 5 kph and again Jack Rees along with his Achieve CC team ran away with it while Blumilk took a couple of high placing.

Totals for the day:       Prize money +£15
                                    Race entry -£15
                                    Petrol -£40
I’m not saying I’m not grateful to the organisers for including a prime but I’m pretty sure the French payout better for their sprints.

Congrats to Josh Lawless on his first race over the channel, by the sounds of it the whole British part team placed within the top 20. A links to Josh’s blog and race report can be found on the left hand side of this page.