OK, lets be clear about something - this was definitely not a race. But I'm including it here as it's a big old event for me, and marks a bit of a turning point in my year where I slow down again.
This had been in the calendar for ages, long before I signed up to any of this road racing malarkey. I've done several 300km+ rides with Phil and Amit, long-time friends and recent audax disciples, but resisted the urge to join them on any of the longer, truly certifiable distances. But this 400km audax started 2km from my house, they were both coming to do it anyway, it looked pretty flat and fast....I was out of excuses basically.
It wouldn't be audax without a very early start, and sure enough the alarm went off at 4.45am. Phil and Amit had been joined by Si and John, two friends of Amit's, and they had all stayed the night in my two bedroom house. Cue a rather chaotic hour as five cyclists try to prepare and eat breakfast, dress, and find the 101 things they need to take with them on a long ride. We made it to Coryton with seconds to spare; fortunately Robyn the audax organiser is as chilled out as they come and not the sort of guy to get uppity at a few latecomers. We signed on and as we rolled out we were joined by another latecomer, Eric, a familiar face from Cardiff Ajax. The next couple of hours took in well-trodden roads for me all the way to Chepstow and over the old Severn Crossing, and six of us riding together and a tailwind made light work of it. As we crossed into England, Eric accelerated into the distance, never to be seen again and would finish several hours ahead of us.
We stopped around the 100km mark in Malmesbury for a spot of coffee and beans on toast. The next 100km was indeed flat and fast but on mostly quiet roads, and we made it to the 200km turning point at a cafe just outside Buckingham just after 3pm. Unfortunately it turned out that just after 3 was a big deal, as the cafe had closed their kitchen at 3 on the dot! We made do with more coffee and cake, and retraced our steps to Bicester in the hope of an early evening meal. A couple of us fancied fish and chips so we sought out the chippy. Well, all I can say is if I lived in Bicester I wouldn't eat fish and chips much - we all universally declared it the worst fish and chips we'd experienced. I forced most of it down, needing the calories, and we went on our way with sun due to set in a couple of hours and 100+ miles still to go....
We pressed on to Malmesbury, now doing turns into what turned out to be a mercifully light headwind. Once the sun went down things got a bit surreal. I had no visible way of keeping track of time, and no idea how quickly we were going, or how many miles we'd done, unless I hit the backlight on my computer. Phil and Amit, the old stagers when it came to riding into and through the night, got us chatting and playing silly word games to pass the time. It did a good job of taking my mind off the yawning and fuzzy tiredness that was starting to kick in. After Malmesbury I knew there would come a point where I'd be back on roads I that recognised, and not long after that see the Severn Bridge. Cross that and it's only 50km home, and ANYONE can ride 50km....
That last 50km flew by as we were back on fast roads and I was able to tick off landmarks that I knew. Sadly things were rudely interrupted in Newport as we caught the aftermath of a car crash that had narrowly missed some other riders on the audax. They were fortunately OK, save for some damaged bikes and looking a bit shocked. The police and bystanders must have been baffled by the appearance of 20 cyclists in Newport at 2am on a Saturday night.
From Newport I could practically touch home, and a good job as it was now gone 3am. Just that last job of diverting up to the finish before heading home to bed. By the time we'd put the hard-working bikes to bed in the garage, had some food and drink I realised 4.45am had come round again and I'd been awake for 24 hours. The ride itself had taken 21 1/2 hours door to door.
Needless to say after that I'll be taking it easy for a bit, in fact that is the plan for most of April as I have another 300km+ ride at the end of the month.
Wednesday 9 April 2014
30th March: Bynea Early Season Road Race, round 1
This didn't go well.
I had that increasingly rare thing, a free Sunday, with Claire away on a hen do. I had a weekend of big mileage planned, until the week before when Krzystof talked me into entering this. To be fair I didn't take a lot of convincing - I'd quite enjoyed my first road race and this looked interesting. It was a chance to revisit the roads of Carmarthenshire which is used to ride in my days living in Swansea, on a tough little hilly circuit that should suit the both of us. Turned out it didn't suit me too well at all.
We arrived nice and early on a perfect spring race day under blue skies, with time for two warm up/ reconnaisance laps of the 7 mile circuit. It was an absolute roller coaster; no big climbs but lots of short, sharp efforts, and hardly a section of flat road the whole way round. We rolled down to the start, only to be told there was a ten minute delay while some cows crossed the road! Fortunately there was no evidence of them crapping on the road when the race got under way, although a bit of cowshit was going to be the least of my problems.
All the waiting around meant starting with completely cold muscles and lungs. The same problem for everyone of course, but something I've found I really struggle with. Sure enough within the first few hundred (draggy uphill) metres of the race, that familiar burning feeling arose in my lungs, along with the taste of blood. I had also started right near the back, which even this road race novice knows is a bad place to be: it's the same as heavy traffic on the motorway, with any minor change in pace up the front resulting in a concertina effect that translates into heavy braking and sprinting up to speed again for those at the back. Combined with the relentlessly up and down nature of the course this meant I spent the first three quarters of lap one desperately hanging on to the back of the pack, or worse, teaming up with other stragglers to bridge back on.
For the final third of the lap the road went a bit more relentlessly uphill - this suited me more as the pace was fractionally lower and, more importantly, a lot more consistent. Just as I was settling down and trying to move up the pack a little - BANG. A crash right in the middle of the bunch took a dozen or so guys down. I dropped to walking pace to weave round the chaos, and watched the rest of the bunch who had avoided the crash accelerate up the road. I looked behind me, thinking there would be enough of us to get organised and ride serenely back across the gap. There wasn't; there was a handful of guys all frantically sprinting to get back in the race. I spent the next lap watching the gap to the bunch get bigger and bigger, to the point where I admitted defeat and sat up.
I rolled round for another lap (the sun was out, after all) and then pulled in with three laps still to race and lots of time to reflect on what had gone wrong. I put it down to one part not enough strength in the legs, one part poor racecraft.
I had that increasingly rare thing, a free Sunday, with Claire away on a hen do. I had a weekend of big mileage planned, until the week before when Krzystof talked me into entering this. To be fair I didn't take a lot of convincing - I'd quite enjoyed my first road race and this looked interesting. It was a chance to revisit the roads of Carmarthenshire which is used to ride in my days living in Swansea, on a tough little hilly circuit that should suit the both of us. Turned out it didn't suit me too well at all.
We arrived nice and early on a perfect spring race day under blue skies, with time for two warm up/ reconnaisance laps of the 7 mile circuit. It was an absolute roller coaster; no big climbs but lots of short, sharp efforts, and hardly a section of flat road the whole way round. We rolled down to the start, only to be told there was a ten minute delay while some cows crossed the road! Fortunately there was no evidence of them crapping on the road when the race got under way, although a bit of cowshit was going to be the least of my problems.
All the waiting around meant starting with completely cold muscles and lungs. The same problem for everyone of course, but something I've found I really struggle with. Sure enough within the first few hundred (draggy uphill) metres of the race, that familiar burning feeling arose in my lungs, along with the taste of blood. I had also started right near the back, which even this road race novice knows is a bad place to be: it's the same as heavy traffic on the motorway, with any minor change in pace up the front resulting in a concertina effect that translates into heavy braking and sprinting up to speed again for those at the back. Combined with the relentlessly up and down nature of the course this meant I spent the first three quarters of lap one desperately hanging on to the back of the pack, or worse, teaming up with other stragglers to bridge back on.
 |
| Hanging out at the back, keeping the following car company. Photo by Wayne Reneke |
For the final third of the lap the road went a bit more relentlessly uphill - this suited me more as the pace was fractionally lower and, more importantly, a lot more consistent. Just as I was settling down and trying to move up the pack a little - BANG. A crash right in the middle of the bunch took a dozen or so guys down. I dropped to walking pace to weave round the chaos, and watched the rest of the bunch who had avoided the crash accelerate up the road. I looked behind me, thinking there would be enough of us to get organised and ride serenely back across the gap. There wasn't; there was a handful of guys all frantically sprinting to get back in the race. I spent the next lap watching the gap to the bunch get bigger and bigger, to the point where I admitted defeat and sat up.
I rolled round for another lap (the sun was out, after all) and then pulled in with three laps still to race and lots of time to reflect on what had gone wrong. I put it down to one part not enough strength in the legs, one part poor racecraft.
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