Diary of a Rookie Veteran Racer – May/June ’11

It seems like an eternity since my first race and the previous blog in this series – partly because it’s been two months since then and partly because so much has happened. One of the big events, obviously, was Team Shutt VR’s visit to the Tour of Wessex so the racing was limited to the first half of May leaving the end of the month as a taper for Wessex.

After starting my racing career with a handicap-format road race (link to April blog) I moved on to a couple of Tuesday evening circuit races at Hillingdon, just half an hour’s drive from work. Each of these was a Regional C (i.e. no BC points on offer) race for 3^rd/4^th category riders running at the same time as an Elite/1^st/2^nd cat race on the same circuit – so I found myself racing alongside some of the Shutt-sponsored Twenty3c Orbea guys in just my second event – very cool. The start of the event was very emotional, coming just one day after the tragic death of Wouter Weylandt in the Giro d’Italia. The first lap of the race was neutralised and run in silence in honour of Wouter.

The rest of the race was a matter of keeping up with the surges, staying in the front half of the bunch and even putting in a few digs off the front before finally being in the wrong place at the wrong time and sprinting to a reasonably OK 12^th. It was great fun though, and good experience of racing on a more technical course. A week later I was back again for more of the same – the race turned out much the same, but this time I was interviewed for Radio 4′s Today programme who wanted to know what grassroots-level racers thought about the whole Contador/clenbuterol affair – I got maybe 5 seconds of fame as it was broadcast the next morning. For some reason they cut out my comments about how great Shutt kit is…

With a week of easy riding after the Tour of Wessex, June got me back into serious training (following a plan this time) and I decided to have a go at the Friday evening Dunsfold Park series (the same track where Top Gear is filmed!). These races are for 4^th cats only and carry BC points for the first 10 places, so a win or a few good results there would upgrade me to 3^rd cat. The first race I turned up for was on the 10^th of June and although the weather was good there was also a strong headwind on the finishing straight. The course follows the perimeter road of the airfield and is essentially non-technical – there is one very slight rise and all of the corners are gentle and easily taken while pedalling, which basically means one thing: a bunch sprint for the win. My training plan for the day was to do a series of anaerobic intervals, so I decided to take that plan into the race and have some fun by going off the front every other lap.

Although I was quickly caught each time, it did inject enough pace into the race that almost a third of the bunch had been dropped by the end. There was a scary moment near the end when one guy went down in the middle of the bunch and I managed to avoid him by inches – luckily apart from being a bit scraped and having a broken bike he was OK. In the last third of the final lap I was at about 3^rd wheel, but that meant that as we came around the last corner onto the long finish straight the two guys ahead of me peeled off and suddenly I was on the front with 800m into the wind to go before the finish line. This is not the ideal position from which to launch a sprint, and 800m later I crossed the line in 14^th place. No points, but great experience and a highly enjoyable race – there is a lot of camaraderie because everyone’s basically starting out and we’re all pretty much in it together.

In the usual way that one justifies these things, I decided that I didn’t want to risk my carbon frame in any more races. Also, the Specialized Roubaix that I was racing was more of a sportive bike with a relatively upright riding position that’s not too aero. You can see what’s coming next: I obviously needed a new bike. The perfect candidate was the soon-to-be-discontinued Cervelo S1, an aero-framed road bike made from aluminium, but widely regarded as superior to many carbon frames. Along with a Shimano Ultegra groupset and 3T bars & stem, it’s a perfect crit-racing bike.

I went to Dunsfold again a week after the first race, but really bad traffic meant that I arrived 10 minutes after the race was due to start. (Un?)fortunately, really bad weather meant that the race was called off that week.

The following week brought another first in my racing career – my first time trial. This was the Kingston Wheelers (my second-claim club) 10-mile TT on the A24 near Dorking, and a perfect debut for my new Cervelo in all its aero glory. With a big headwind on the way out I was pleased to record a 26:12 for the TT, and learned something very important: TTs are much harder than road races. In a road race the pace may get high but there are also lulls where you can recover in the bunch before the next surge. In a TT there is no chance to relax – you basically have to ride as hard as you can for as long as you can with no respite whatsoever except for a few precious seconds at the turnaround. That said, they are great training sessions, inexpensive to enter and very social affairs.

A couple of days later it was back to Dunsfold and with another big headwind on the finish straight I learned from my previous mistakes, recovered in the bunch for the last couple of laps, came into the finishing straight about 10^th and managed to sprint into what I thought was 5^th place but was officially listed as 6^th, and my first BC points! Or so I thought… When I checked the British Cycling website a few days later I got a bit of a shock:

Yes, I am listed as 6^th – but no points?! Was there a penalty I was unaware of?

Asking around and checking the British Cycling website, it turns out that if you have a Provisional licence then you can’t score any points. Even if you then pay to upgrade to a full licence, those points are gone forever. About the only good thing to come from this was to learn that the upgrade was half-price after 1^st July, but that left a bitter taste in my mouth, especially since the British Cycling handbook (i.e. “the rules”) say nothing whatsoever about it – it’s only mentioned on their website.

So in summary, I had some great races, got a new bike and learned tons during May & June – but got no further towards the season’s goal of making it to a 3^rd cat racer. I also signed up for a university-run trial to evaluate the effects on TT performance of dietary nitrate (the allegedly performance-enhancing ingredient in beetroot juice), more about which next month.

May/June summary:

Tags: RookieVeteranRacer