London Phoenix member Martin Peck entered his first road race at Hillingdon in January. Here he recounts the experience:

With 14 years since I last raced I was really pleased to find I could stay near the front of the pack without too much stress. Conditions were blustery, so I concentrated hard on staying in the slip stream of others as much as possible to ensure I reached the finish. Occasionally riders attacked and broke away from the main field, but none of these small groups moved out of sight so there seemed little cause to do any work at the front.

As the last few laps approached I began to get my head around the idea of contesting a sprint for the finish – something I’d not succeeded in doing as a teenager. But there were plenty of guys who seemed to be working harder than me so I figured I might have a shot at some points. Needless to say, getting a spot near the front was much harder as the finish approached.

On the final lap I had the strength to ride up to the front on the far side of the circuit and slot in behind a wheel – a position I held precariously whilst squeezed from both sides around the penultimate corner. And then everything started happening very fast… accelerating hard, am I in the right gear, out of the saddle, am I in the right gear, go! Awesome feeling of pulling out from behind my tow and charging off the front of the bunch! Wasn’t quite the fairy-tail ending, the race was won by a guy who attacked early for the line and broke clear by 15m – so I had to make do with 2nd place! Great, but can’t wait to win one.

Also read Ken Iiino’s account of this race with photos.

Read Andy Nash’s experience of racing at Dunton in September 2007.

Winter is coming and the cyclocross season is well underway. We’ve already raced in ‘hot and dry’ and ‘wet and muddy’ conditions. In the cross season you learn to cope with the challenge of the weather and of racing on a wide variety of courses. There are races pretty much every weekend from now until February and Phoenix will be represented at most. So why not join us for an hour of fast and furious fun, details are on our calendar and at londonxleague.co.uk

photo’s by Andy Waterman – thanks for making us look quite fast!

Don’t hang up your wheels just because it’s winter! London Phoenix riders are out in force throughout the winter – training together at Regents Park on midweek evenings, and at the weekends, road racing at Hillingdon, cyclocross racing in the London League, and mountain bike racing at Thetford and Gorrick.

London Phoenix riders had fun in the sunshine and sandy trails in Surrey on Saturday. Setting off from Newlands Corner near Guildford, they expored the trails to the south – these ranged from dry sand to dense mud and proved suitably challenging over four and a half hours to include a cake stop at Peaslake village shop. All riders thrived on the course but it proved too much for some of the bikes and the toll included one puncture, one set of brake pads, and two chains.

See the road and off-road pages for race and event reports. And click this youtube link for a video of our riders at a recent cyclocross race.

Don’t miss these reports on our members racing abroad during 2007: on road the Etape de Tour (France) and the Tour of Flanders (Belgium); off-road the Trans-Rockies, La Ruta (Costa Rica), the Roc d’Azur (France), the Bukit Timah (Singapore), and the Gran Canaria marathon.