Cadence Report

The first round of the Junior National Series, the Cadence Junior Road Race, is now completed and I am now looking on to the next round, the Junior Tour of Bristol.

Cadence went ok... It could have been a lot better but under the circumstances it wasn't too bad. These circumstances involved me getting a cold half way through the week before the race. I was hoping I'd get over it before race day, but unfortunately I didn't and as a result I had real trouble breathing properly through the race and could not breath through my nose at all as it was completely blocked.

The race was 7 laps of a 9.7 mile circuit, 68 miles in total, which include a steep climb at around 600 metres in length every lap. I have inserted the course profile below. The hill hurt A LOT but I was getting over it quite comfortablely towards the front of the bunch every lap and I could see that the bunch was getting smaller and smaller every time we peaked out over the top of the climb. On the penultimate climb there were 9 riders off the front and bunch went down to about 30 riders, from the 100 starters. Unfortunately team mates Charlie Fawke and Tom Laker got shelled out the back this time along with many other riders, however, in Tom's situation he was also suffering from a cold which has subsequentely turned into a virus since the race. Considering this, he did pretty well to last as long as he did. On the last lap my legs were still feeling pretty strong and I decided to wait for the final cimb, which the finish line lay on top of, before making my big effort. There were already 9 riders away so we were only going for 10th place in the bunch. I was sitting 8th wheel coming onto the foot of the climb and the legs were still good. Annoyingly as soon as the road steepened my legs were filled with the worst cramp I think I've ever had. I tried pushing through the cramp but my legs just seized up and I nearly came to a stand still. I gritted my teeth and struggled to ride thorugh it to the finish, even though I was going very slowly by this point.

By the end of the slow and painful climb to the top I found out that I finished 40th from the100 starters (race results: http://www.cadencecycleracing.co.uk/cjrr_info/cjrr_results.11.pdf) and I was right near the back of the group of 30 odd riders I was in. I was very annoyed with the cramp as I knew if it hadn't happened I would've been up there on the climb. It was ever more frustrating as I knew it could have been easily avoided. This was because I had finished both my bottles on my bike after 1 hour 45 mins and I then took another bottle in the feed zone at the 2 hour mark. Unfortunately, there was Coke in the bottle I was given as one or two of the guys in the team like to have Coke in the last hour of the race. However, I do not and I struggled to drink during the last two laps due to its fizziness and ended up only managing a few mouthfuls before giving the rest to Charlie. This meant that in the last hour and 15 mins of racing I only had a few sips of coke therefore leaving me to get cramp, as the wikipedia page on leg cramps states 'Causes of leg cramp include...dehydration'. I thought I had mentioned previosuly that I don't like Coke in a race, but maybe I didn't make it clear enough and in the future I will make it very clear that I only want energy drinks or water passed up to me in the race.

All in all, the race could have gone much better for me and the team as a whole. However, I can take some positives from the race as I managed to finish well inside the top half of the field in the select bunch, despite being ill and getting cramp in the finale. With this in mind I am very positive about the weekend coming as I am going to Belgium to race both Saturday, with team mate Charlie Fawke, and then on Sunday, with the whole team at the junior Gent-Wevelgem race. I have given myself high expectations as I aim to get top ten in both races. I am also very positive about the next round of the juniors series, the Junior Tour of Bristol.

My face clearly shows that the climb was a painful one.

Despite the dissappointment at Cadence, I am top of my league in the road.cc Fantasy Cycling 2011 game, and 63rd overall out of the 1651 teams on the game and these are the lads that I selected for Milan - San Remo to get me into this position:

And these are the mugs that are behind me, dr_brock, in my league.

Another Sunday and another Serrl

This weekend marked another Sunday and another Serrl road race, this one a little less intimidating than last weekend as it was only 60 miles and was only a 2/3/4 event. The Cycling Teacher was meant to be team leader for the race but unfortunately he fell ill and had to withdraw himself from the race the night before. Team manager and team sponsor at the race, Trevor Holmes, therefore decided that me and Drew would be the team leaders for the day.

The race was pretty steady for the first two laps with the only worry being the endless amount of attacks from Dulwich Paragon riders, who seemed to have 50% of the field in their jersey. I tried to get into a few moves but nothing was allowed to get away and as the circuit wasn't super hilly it was quite hard to make a break happen. After about 3 laps team mate Tom Laker made his routine crash when the guy in front of him came down claiming that his ' brand new and unused slippery tubs' just sipped on the corner, it didn't sound very convincing to me.

With one lap to go the race was still all together and in the first quarter of the last lap a group of 3 riders rode away from the peloton. The riders in the break weren't very strong and they were pretty much just let to go off the front as everyone presumed they'd come back fairly quickly. Unfortunately this did not happen and once we came to the main climb on the circuit, the top of which was only 1.5 miles from the finish, they still had a gap. At this stage my legs were feeling fine and this other guy who had seemed strong during the race attacked. I considered following but then decided against it as I had already got it in my head that I would wait for the sprint, still presuming the other riders would come back. Once we were over the top of the climb I found myself around 6th wheel and was 4th wheel with about a mile to go. At this point everybody sat up and I found myself right at the front riding into the wind with nowhere to go. I stupidly remained here and then when the sprint started, not very surprisingly, I had no zip left in my legs. I was pretty angry afterward, especially after finding out that the guy who had attacked over the top of the climb had caught and passed the leaders. This picture pretty much sums up how I felt after the finish:

Once I found out that Drew had won the bunch sprint for 4th place, as one of the escapees from the original three riders was brought back in the last kilometre. I felt a bit better but was still really annoyed with myself for not going with the move on the hill. According to Mr Felix English it's probably that I 'should just be less of a pussy' and shouldn't be scared about making a gamble or hurting myself early on in the race. For once I actually agree with him and I think I was 'such a pussy' in the race because after last season, where I was pretty much obese, my main objective would always be to stay with the bunch as long as I could and avoid wasting unnecessary energy where possible. Whereas this year I've actually done some training so can allow myself to use more energy early on getting into to breaks and making gambles in attacks etc.

Drew won the bunch sprint for 4th

Next weekend is the big one, first round of the Junior Nat Series. The Cadence Road Race, which I am looking at on google street view at the current time of writing and it appears that it is the same circuit this year as the one I did on the first road stage of the Ras De Cymru last June/July. As I remember the lap is not too bad but had one quite hard climb in it every time round, which the race subsequently finishes up, so that should be interesting. That is providing I'm healthy. I woke up this morning with a saw throat which I was not too happy about and I'm now filling my body with vitamin c to make sure it doesn't get any worse before the highly prestigious first classic of the season in Ital... Wales. Cadence that is, not Milan-San Remo.

Frant-Lamberhurst ONE, Brock Duncumb Rogers NIL

This Sunday marked the start of the 2011 season proper for me at the E,1,2,3 Serrl Summer Series 1 event on the Lamberhurst-Frant course, 6 laps of the fairly long 20km course which incuded quite a lot of climbing. Although I've already ridden a few other races this year, I believe that this is where the season officially starts for our team as from here on in we are racing pretty much every weekend all the way through until next autumn. We had a good turn out with 7 team riders attending which turned out to us having just fewer than 20% of the whole field, as there were only 40 riders on the start line. However, even before the race we knew that we were unlikely to dominate as there were lots of very strong elites and 1st cats including former In Gear Development Squad rider Tom Copeland.

The race started at a fairly comfortable pace and continued this way for just over a lap, at which point all hell broke loose on one of the steeper climbs of the circuit and and attacks started flying from all directions. Fortunately the tactical mastermind known as the 'Cycling Teacher' (http://willkempcycling.blogspot.com/) had predicted pre-race that this would happen on this exact climb on this lap and this meant that our team was ready. Team mate Matt 'Northern Star' Pilkington was already up the road as the attacks started to fly and despite our teams best efforts to block, we filled the front of the bunch with 5 orange jerseys spread across the road, there were lots of riders getting a gap up the climb and across to him. At this point I decided to follow the attacks and went pretty hard up the climb. When I got over the top I looked behind and saw team mate Drew Holmes right on my wheel and then behind him a massive gap. This was the decisive split which the 'Cycling Teacher' had predicted with the original main bunch splitting into two groups of 20. We had 3 riders in the front group of 20; myself, Drew and Matt. Towards the end of the second lap our group started to fracture with small groups of twos and threes going away. At this point I was still feeling strong but as I had never been in this position of being in the break in a big man's race before, largely due to my bulky body weight last season and lack of superior leg muscles, I decided to hold back as we were only on the second lap of six. 8 riders ended up going away and we could tell straight away that we were not going to be seeing these guys again today as their group consisted of all the stronglads.

The second group with; me, Drew, Matt and 5 others riders continued to do through and off for a couple of more laps. Although, I don't think many of the 'older generation' of riders in our group, guys that were even older than Matt and Will (I know I didn't think it possible either), actually understood what this was as they continued to bark at us to go through and off even though that was what we had been doing for the last 30 miles! They also seemed incapable of understanding, despite being told many times, that me and the other junior in the group Lawrence Carpenter couldn't come through on descents because of our little junior gears.

Drew had been suffering for a number of laps and with 2 laps to go he got dropped from our group on the finish climb. A couple of other guys had been dropped the lap before and our group was now down to 9 riders. At this point I was feeling really strong but then suddenly with about one and a half laps to go I blew up big time. This ultimately ended up in me getting dropped up one of the larger climbs towards the end of the circuit and finishing the end of that lap very very slowly before hanging up my wheels for the day. I was really angry with myself, and also surprised, as I had gone from feeling like one of the stronger riders in the group to being completely spent within the space of half a lap. I hoping that this is because this is my first long race of the season and that my body isn't ready to make such a big effort for such a long period of time yet.

Matt ended up being the first rider from our group which ended up being 9th overall so at least the team came away with a result and it made up some consolation for me as I had done quite a lot of work in our group enabling Matt to sit on the back and rest his legs at some points.

The most important thing I learnt from today's race is that... My new Reynolds are sweeeeeeet. They felt fast and super smooth and the race photographer obviously noticed this to as he took a photo of me which showed my new wheels looking first class.