Andy Nash describes his first road race…

I had foolishly decided the right time to get into racing was at the end of the season, and the last in a series … However, there really are races to be found through the Winter, and I was to prove you can race on a very heavy 12 year-old 8-speed ‘museum piece’.

Preparation
I had visited the Ford test track at Dunton, near Basildon, the previous week, as I wanted to recce what a race was all about. The Dunton Series is a relatively small event, a 4th cat and beginners race and an earlier vets race.I’d never seen one live before, though I had raced mountain bikes for a few years, more than 10 years ago. This time I had put some miles in and lost a good 5 kilos. I’d been out with London Phoenix just the once at the Regents Park Tuesday night training circuits (which turned out to be ideal preparation), and had spent most of my training on my own prior to joining the club, so was also there to check out the speed – it looked pretty fast from the sidelines! However the people involved weren’t all lean mean cycling machines, so I thought if I could complete the race that would be great, and hanging onto the main bunch would be my main objective.

The start
I hadn’t arrived in time to see the start on my recce, but expected it to be a gradual one, unlike my mountain bike cross-country racing which had involved a sprint start. We all (20-25 of us) rolled off slowly and I slotted myself into somewhere between 5th and 10th for the first few laps as the pace picked up, aware that I didn’t want to get left behind on a break, and being nearer the front minimised the chance of being involved in a crash. The first thing to do was to concentrate on getting into the rhythm and following the wheel in front. I ended up staying in 5th-10th for most of the race – it seemed like a good idea.

The race format was one hour, plus five laps. The course has quite a hill at one end, apparently unusual for a circuit. There’s also banking (a little like a velodrome but not as steep) at both ends which forces the field into a line following the bottom of the bank as they go round. The first time around, it didn’t seem too bad, but as time went on I realised this was actually pretty tough, and I’m not a climber! It may not have been that long, but I tended to lose places every time we hit the hill and towards the end I lost touch with the group there on a couple of laps by 10 – 20 metres, and had to battle back again. However on the rest of the course I felt strong and had to fight against the urge to roll to the front or go away so early. I assumed everyone else knew better than me, and I was probably right.

Taking part in the race were individuals, a large group of five (or so I thought) from Cambridge Uni CC, and a handful of teams of two or three. Of these Cambridge were clearly strongest. One of them had come second the week before. With about 10 minutes left of the first hour all five made an attack down from the aforementioned hilly end. I had just managed to stay with the group up the hill, so missed the break, and away they went. Three of them buried themselves to get their two strongest away, and fell back whilst the two out front built up a lead of a minute or so.

The break
I still felt strong, so I started to think that I had a chance to do better than just finishing with the bunch, so I moved to the front and tried to pick up the pace, assuming everyone else would be like-minded apart from the three Cambridge guys. However, not just those three, but a couple of other guys took turns to move up in front of the bunch to ‘block’, that is, join the pace at the front but then gradually slow it down to help their guys stay away. Yes, two Cambridge guys were racing plain clothes! That’s bike racing – nothing wrong there. They did a good job and it was up to the rest of us to organise ourselves.

A guy in one of the other small teams decided to try and get across to the break, and I tried to join him, but by the time I linked up to him I was stuffed and couldn’t take over – we hit the hill and the bunch caught us. I couldn’t get the rest of the bunch to work together around the blocking (I’m not sure they all realised it was happening), so I made many more small attacks intended to get the pace up and to probe to see if I could get away on my own, but with two laps to go gave up on that – we weren’t going to catch them and the pace was now too high for me to get away. Time to prepare for the sprint for third!

Sprint finish
I sat in about 6th around the last bend, and rather than slipstream I sat just outside the pace line as I had no more need to conserve energy. I was also aiming to prevent someone I thought likely to be a sprinter get away with his lead-out man. As we came out of the final bend, the pace picked up and before I knew it we were out of our saddles and I dropped a few places. I realised I should have already looked for a wheel of my own to follow, and there was a line of sprinting riders either side of me. Too late – you live and learn! Well, I stayed with the bunch and achieved my objective, so why not put my head down and sprint with them anyway on my own into the wind to try and finish with them?

Then there was a surprise – out of the corners of my eyes I could see the guys on either side falling back despite (or maybe due to?) the fact they had wheels to follow, so I put every last ounce of energy in and went for it! It seemed to work, but there was one guy left – annoyingly one of those dastardly Cambridge guys, and he was too far in front of me. I’d like to think if I had known I had the chance, I would have gone earlier and harder, with a wheel, and might have caught him, but we’ll never know…

So, 4th in my first race was pretty surprising and I loved it – different from mountain bike racing in that there was more thinking involved, and there were periods of intense work followed by a bit of rest. I didn’t realise how much 4th cat would in fact resemble the races I’d seen on TV, with team tactics, attacks, breaks, the personal planning required throughout the race and so on. There is plenty going on – just a little slower in 4th cat I guess…

When’s the next race?
If you are thinking of racing, just do it! It is great fun, if you find on the day you are not fit enough, its no disaster and certainly nothing to be ashamed about – I came very close to falling off the back and was perhaps lucky the pace was slow enough to catch. Some others did get dropped and at least one was lapped, but finished anyway. Good effort…

I think ‘race pace’ is something you train your body to get used to (and I was lucky enough to have trained with some good riders over the years so already had this). Tuesday night circuits in Regents Park with London Phoenix are ideal for this, though there is nothing to be lost by trying the real thing. Don’t be disheartened by being dropped – use it as a learning experience. You should make sure you can ride in a group first really though. Once your body and mind can tolerate it, you can start to work endurance and strength to help you ride longer races, follow breaks and so on. As for my bike, it is going to have to perform at least once more before my new one is fully built up.

If you’ve read this far, then, knowingly or not knowingly, you must want to try this! I’m going to try and prove this was not one-off at Hillingdon in the Imperial RT Winter Series most Saturdays until February 16th 2008. Phoenix members can check the forum for more details or other races. This should be a similar, though a bigger event as there’s a youth and E/12/3 category race too, and there are BC points on offer so perhaps the standard might be slightly higher. Rumour has it there may also be some races at Dunton on Sundays over the Winter, so see you there!

London Phoenix riders Dan Jenkins and Dick Smith completed the epic Trans-Rockies race last month. This is a seven day mountainbike stage race, covering 600km and included 12,000 metres of climbing. Click here to read Dan’s report of their awesome achievement.

Dan Jenkins report of his TransRockies race…

Day 1 was an easy start, or so we thought, only 30km to the village of Invermere, but that included an immediate steep gravel climb up the side of the ski slopes followed by a most amusing track cut through a forest leading into a gruelling ‘hike a bike’ for 2km up and over a fantastic mountain pass. The route across the top was one of those ‘don’t look down’ times, a traverse across the side of a scree slope on a track no wider than a few tire widths; this was followed by a great technical descent of 36 switchbacks through the woods. Many people, including myself, went over the handlebars and one lady was seen being extricated from two trees between which she’d firmly jammed herself mid way into a plummet down the hill. Finally down the hillside we tracked a fantastic singletrack trail looking down over the river into Invermere, where we cleaned up, got a massage from the lovely massage ladies and settled for the first of many meals in a curling hall (it seems every town of 500+ people in Canada has a curling hall).

Day 2 pushed us a bit more, and really started to move out into the backcountry. 60km later we’d crossed our first rivers (very bracing indeed!), got very good at piling over the ‘water bars’ crossing the trails, while maintaining 70kmph and had a great rolling singletrack ride into a fantastic campsite at Nipika. Well, actually more a meadow in the middle of the woods with a dammed stream providing a, very cold, fresh water lake to soothe the aching muscles. Some enterprising local had set up a BBQ which was almost mobbed by riders desperate for a burger, the queue for which saw me waiting about an hour for some food, but as you can imagine it tasted damn good. Another massage followed by dinner and a slide show of photos and video of the days racing.

Day 3 saw a change to the originally planned route, due to forest fires near Crowsnest Pass which was planned for later in the week. Instead we had a serious 90km loop around Nipika. The river crossings became wider and more extreme, and the hills didn’t get any smaller. Only a slight problem with the day, I managed to loose a brake pad on one of the bumpier sections of the morning – no problem I thought – I had some spares in my rucksack, however I was also missing the crucial pin to hold it all together, another quick root around and luckily I had a cable tie floating around at the bottom of the bag which did the job and got us on the move again. The last climb of the day saw me bonk quite badly and although we didn’t loose too much time to the other racers, this was the first of a couple of my “worst moments” of the race. A few Cliff gels later and I had just about recovered enough to ride through an amazing piece of singletrack, approx 150 metres above a river, which nicely brought us back to Nipika for more burgers and yet another massage!

Day 4 was the first really long day, 116km, with a technical morning, a big climb, followed by some gorgeous singletrack winding its way through the forested backcountry leading onto a very long fire road section to transition down to the next campsite at Whiteswan Lake. We’d had the best weather of any TransRockies to date and it was starting to show. The dust clouds down the trails were amazing, and even worse if a logging truck came by. Sometimes you’d be lucky to see just in front of your wheel, if you could even see your wheel at all, all at over 30kmph. The last few km were just a long old slog, time trialling has never been my forte but we managed to actually find some reserve power in our legs, worked really well together and made up quite a bit of time over many other teams (even if it did force Dick’s heart rate higher than *any* climb before or after on the race). Must have been some of that early morning Regents Park training paying off! A well earned slice of water melon and a sit in the shade of some of the caravans ensued. Suffice to say we slept well that night.

Day 5 was when the tired legs started to make themselves known, we crossed two serious mountain passes, mud pits, rivers and the longest and one of the fastest gravel descents I’ve ever ridden. Our main “rivals” for the race, were Bill Gilbert and Chris Ward from London Dynamo, they were dispatched on the first descent of the day, a 70kmph+ blast down a, heavily water barred, fire road after a 900m climb topping out at about 2200m. A long ride along the valley floor ensued, with some hard racing, the Dynamo boys had caught us, after which we started to climb up to the second climb of the day back up to 2200m again! Disaster struck for Chris as his roadie legs put too much torque through his drive chain, snapping off the rear mech. We stopped to help, he had a spare hanger but the snapped hanger wouldn’t come away from the mech, no matter how many of us jumped on, wrestled with it, after half an hour we had to give up and carry on, leaving Chris hitting his rear mech with a large boulder. A big hike-a-bike section was followed by some nice singletrack before entering the ‘infamous TransRockies Rock Garden’ with 2km continuous rocks between fist and head size, while descending nearly 400m at the same time! The most, scary-fun I’ve had on a bike – It was a strange mixture of sadness, knowing that I’d probably not ride it again any time soon and relief at having reached the bottom and not broken myself! The rest of the decent was a 10km blast down a great, rocky in places, piece of open singletrack followed by a short road section to the finish line. More watermelon, burgers and a well deserved massage were the order of the day. Bill and Chris limped home about an hour after us.

Day 6 was the hardest of the lot. All uphill for 120km with 2500m climbing over 3 passes. I’m sure we saw senses of humour left lying at the roadside throughout that day. Dick and I managed to pull each other through what can only be described as brutal. A seven percent climb up a road was a “nice” warm up for the legs, some singletrack followed but then we hit the first climb of the day a 900m accent peaking at over 2000m. A section of fast, dusty fire road and a small stint on fast tarmac saw us reach the final feed station of the day 30k’s to go but that included climbing to the top of Sparwood Ridge some 1000m higher that we were! A tough climb in the heat ensued with a lot of riders, including me struggling with saddle sores. Dick and I made the summit, overtaking a lot of other teams who, with very tired legs, were struggling to even walk up the last couple of km. The pain in my legs and bum were dulled slightly with every rider over taken. The hardest parts of the week were when you had no targets to aim for I started counting trees at one point anything to take your mind of the pain and the nagging thought that if I just stopped for a second it would be alright! The descent was another mad-cap blast down a rock strewn singletrack path, the trees were overhanging so much that we were being whipped across the head by small branches, very painful at 50kmph! An amazing rollercoaster piece of singletrack in the last 5km of the day was welcome reward for the hours of slogging up hill.

Day 7 was seeming like an anti-climax as we looked at the 50km ride along the valley to the finish in Fernie, but another heads-down time-trial approach to the fire roads saw us making big inroads into the field There was a really great singletrack finish to the day too, to give a great taste in the mouth, only bettered by the Champagne at the finishers enclosure! We managed 51st, our highest placed stage finish, which dragged us after 36 hours, 59 minutes on the bike, up to a respectable 65th place in the Open Men’s category.
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Overall the best, most painful and most rewarding week of riding I have ever done. Met some great people, witnessed some of the most amazing scenery and the most thrillingriding. Would I do it again? Yes, without thinking about it.

Simon Pemberton reports on the London Phoenix Afan Forest trail weekend in South Wales

The LP Afan Forest trail weekend saw us arriving late Friday night and setting up camp in the free camping area next to Glyncorrwg visitors centre which has showers, bike wash, a great café and bar open and serving food until 10pm and bike shop/hire facilities. It’s also right next to the trail head for the Skyline and Whytes Level trails.

On Saturday afternoon we tackled the Skyline trail, an epic experience with long rocky singletrack climbs and descents and many stunning views before retiring to the café for a well earned feast, shower and comfy seats to watch bikey DVDs of blokes in floppy hats jumping off stuff.

On Sunday we took on the shorter more technical Penhydd Trail followed by the aptly named Wall – a seat of your pants rollercoaster fall down the side of a mountain with precipitous drops that test the nerve as much as the bike skills especially with two of us recently recovered from various broken bones.

A great time was had by all with two days of great riding that felt like a week so well worth the trip.

The 2007 Etape du Tour (billed as “the toughest yet”, but maybe they say that every year?) saw Pete Richardson (his 11th Etape), Claire Halligan, Alex Christians and Stuart Lockyear grinding their way over the five Pyrenean cols of Stage 15 of this year’s Tour de France, each hotter and tougher than the last. The cumulative effect was brutal, but the glorious atmosphere, the spectators’ support and the sense of occasion kept them going to the end, with finishing times ranging from a silver medal time of 8 hours 20 for Alex to a more sedate 12 hours for Pete.

The Etape is a very special event and despite the very tough parcours and the logistical nightmares, the good organisation (this year), the closed roads, the bonhomie of 7000 riders from all over the world and the close association with the TdF make this a must.

Roll on 2008!

It’s cyclocross season again! Come along and join us on Sunday 16 September as London Phoenix hosts the first round of the London League at Temple School in Strood, Kent.

It’s a great day out, an opportunity to meet our club members, finding out about cyclocross & an opportunity to watch and cheer on the racers. We will be putting up the course from 9am and the races will start at 11:00 (under 10s), 11:15 (under 12s), 11:45 (youth), 13:00 (juniors and seniors, veterans and women).

Contact London Phoenix cyclocross co-ordinator: Neil
London League information – London Cyclocross Association

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