Finally.

Well after last week’s slight ray of hope, the foul weather had returned to us again. Unfortunately, not quite bad enough for the races to be cancelled but wet enough for your kit to wish that they had been. Luckily my spirits were slightly higher than they had been for the weekend as I knew I was doing two first category races, rather than the seemingly unfinishable elites. After last week’s pretty poor performance I decided an easy week was on the cards. I’d tried training, but that hadn’t worked, so I concluded that my legs maybe weren’t enjoying the constant punishing I was giving them on a day to day basis. I also spent much of the week considering how to save some beer that my parents had brought over. It had come in a large bladder with a tap at the bottom, but after a couple of days it had begun to expand and on the morning of the third day it had sprung a leak. So after working out how to relieve the pressure I set about finding new containment devices so it could be happily consumed at a later date. I found them in the form of used water bottles that you buy from the supermarket, oh joy. Now we just have to drink it all, hurray!

Also during the week, after a quick chat with the buildings proprietor, we unexpectedly received some new mattresses. Although the old ones weren’t too bad, they were a little lumpy and if you found yourself in certain position, the springs made things a little uncomfortable. On taking the old ones out I was happy to found out that mine had obviously been the scene of several bed wetting occurrences (the yellow stains are a total give away). Also, on the Friday, the teams’ new helmets arrived, Casco Ares’. These are pretty nice helmets that I’d never even heard of before and at 150 Euros a pop (RRP), not cheap either. I always thought a team looked a lot smarter when they have the same helmets even if you can’t tell who the hell anyone is. So even if none of us finish the race, at least we’ll look smart when we pack. In other news, touching my toes is now somewhat of a formality, although I’m struggling to pull off Bruce Lee. I don’t think my slim 6’4” figure allows for anything but the bare minimum of upper body muscle.

Race time came round again and I was feeling pretty fresh after my week of relative R’n’R so I thought I would definitely finish, at least...maybe. The first race of the weekend was an hour and a half drive away, a drive which felt pretty quick in comparison to the three and a half to four hour drives we had been putting in the past few weeks. It was raining when we got there and still raining when we arrived at the start line, after soaking ourselves more than anything in the warm up. The field was about 80-90 in size, although I did see the number 107 at one point, but this is a fact I have learnt to put out of my head before a race as I have found that there is no point worrying about how many riders there are. Better to concentrate on how you’re going to make them all suffer. As we were waved away everyone went to clip into their pedals, the unfortunate chap next to me either didn’t find his or found it too fast and slipped onto the tarmac after approximately zero metres. After a quick chuckle to myself, it was soon down to business as I quickly moved up the field to try and cover the early attacks. After a few of these moves, we came to a relatively fast downhill section with a couple of turns, turns that you wouldn’t bat an eyelid to in normal conditions but in the heavy rain one had been turned into an ice rink. A fact quickly learned by the 2 riders who were about 50 metres ahead as we came to the first one. Being about 6^th in the bunch at the time I had a great view of them skidding across the road on their asses into the gutter. Luckily this gave the bunch a much needed prior warning and we duly took the corner at about 2 miles per hour (about 3.2kph) otherwise it might have been 50 riders on the floor rather than 2. For the next four laps at least one person would crash on this corner and on the fourth lap I would nearly be one of them.

A small break started to form ahead of the bunch on the 2^nd lap and coming into the finish for the third time I managed to pull away with about fifteen others just behind the break. We didn’t work particularly well as everyone wanted to save themselves so that when they got close enough they could jump across to the break ahead and leave the rest of the suckers behind. Because of this I waited until the person I thought was possibly the strongest jumped, and when our group started to split on a fast cross-wind (have I not mentioned the wind yet?) section, he did and I followed. He went full gas right in the gutter so no one could get any shelter, a good idea that I thought about way too much at the time. I managed to hold his wheel though and we got across the split, unfortunately everyone else had done the same thing and we were just back together again. At this point we hit one of the two draggy climbs and the rider I had followed realised we were all still reeling from his move and went again. This time he pulled about 8 riders away and unfortunately I wasn’t one of them. This group immediately began to work as they saw they had the gap and my group was again left dallying about, everyone once more waiting to try and jump across at the opportune moment. This moment never came and the next few laps were spent occasionally getting some speed up and then slowing and then attacking and then slowing. On the fourth lap we came to the slippery corner and just before it the rider directly in front of me turned round to see what was going on. In doing so he put pressure on his tyre where there was dangerously little friction, his bike came from underneath him and he was suddenly sliding down the road. “Great!” I thought “there’s no way out of this one” and I almost closed my eyes for the inevitable crash. It’s a good job I didn’t as what happened next is a miracle that can only have been performed by the cycling gods themselves. As he hit the deck his bike went to the right and he slid to the left and amazingly became detached from the pedals, this left me with a 5 centimetre gap which I took in a kind of trance. The rest is not exactly history, but that would be an appropriate thing to say. I decided it was a sign and stayed upright for the rest of the race.

With about 5 laps to go and the front group well up the road I managed to jump away with 5 others who were all had teammates behind and so we forged ahead with no challenge. We worked well and at this point the team car came up behind us. “Finally” I thought, the team car was following me rather than driving past. We came within a minute of a small dropped group ahead but didn’t quite catch them. From the 6 I sprinted in an unfortunate 3^rd, this put me in a respectable but not great 20^th overall. At the end after the weather had dried up, it dried all the mud on me with it so my legs, face, kit and bike were in a particular state.

The next morning I had all my kit washed, cleaned my bike and got some good recovery. The race wasn’t far away so I rode there and by sheer fluke it was raining so after 3 minutes my bike was as dirty as it had been. The race started and I moved myself up as quickly as possible as I had been told the wind would sort it out pretty early on (Wind? Bien sur, toujours). On the second lap I saw one of the favourites make a move, but as I was in no place to reply I shouted to the peloton to get a move on. They responded, the hammer went down and after about a minute and a half there were gaps, the main one being a couple of places in front of me. I found myself on the front like an idiot and so dropped back in the hope I could jump across. This hope was pretty unfounded as when I did jump everyone came with me and I made little impression. All I did was put myself in the red for the hardest bit of the course. It was here that it continued to be hard and I began to go backwards, all the time knowing that the selection was being made and I was nowhere near it. I found myself in a group that was quickly losing ground and the one minute to the head of the race might as well have been an hour, it was about this time that it started hailing. My group continuously attacked each other (it got rather annoying and painful, but mostly painful) until about 4 laps to go when we started to catch a small group ahead. It was then that a strange phenomenon that only happens in small groups in cycling occurred, we slowed down. Why do you slow down when you are about to catch the group in front?!? Thankfully with about 5km to go on the last lap we did catch them and I sprinted in 5^th in our group but I’m not sure where overall. It could have been 30^th at best but 45^th at worst, I’m sure I’ll find out, it was our club that was running it after all.

So there it is, I finally finished a race, two races even! And although they didn’t go quite as spiffingly as they could, I have my first top 20, be it 20^th. I also seem to be learning the hard way that racing over here is about using your efforts wisely and at the right time. In England you can get with it now and again, but here, if you mess up once it’s race over.

Next week 2 more Elite Nationals, so it’ll be interesting to see how each of them goes, hopefully well.

But until then,

vaarwel