Cycling has taken me many places over the
years. I have skirted stone walls and precipitous drops screaming down mountain
passes too fast, having suffered the sustained near suffocation of climbing to
the top. I have ridden through Berber villages and sated my hunger with the
drifting aromas of various tagines. I have ridden 170 miles solo as a 21 year
old, and suffered the early stages of hypothermia above the mythical climb of
Alpe D’Huez. I have enjoyed sun soaked rides in many countries of the world. And
I’ve fallen and broken bones, and sustained more cuts and bruises than I can
recall. I have been lucky enough
to race; to compete; and to have some success. And to suffer. Or at least I
thought I had suffered until last Sunday…
Last Sunday was the Autostrasse Road Race.
An E123 race penciled in for 75 miles. Sunday was by far the warmest day so far
in 2013 after a torrid start to the year. Temperatures touched 21’c and the sun
shone all day. It was stunning. I hardly noticed. What I did notice was the wind.
Jeez the wind was blowing. Two things I know about racing in Suffolk; 1) It is
not as flat as you imagine, and 2) despite this if the wind is up there are
some hellishly exposed roads. I
knew the circuit based nr Somersham having ridden it a couple of years ago.
This wasn’t to help me.
Approximately 60 riders lined up for the
start including a good showing from IG Sigma Sport, and a handful of other
domestic pro riders. These were the men who would shape the race. The first lap
was hellishly fast. Attack after attack after attack. Thankfully I was
relatively well position about halfway up the bunch and avoided the fate of the
20 or so riders who were dropped on the very first lap. The circuit is a tricky
combination of uphill finish, drag over the top, left turn into a huge
head/cross wind main road section, followed by a twisty narrow fast section to
the bottom of the climb again. 11 laps were in the offing. The bunch was strung
out single file by IG along the main road in the cross wind with everyone sat
in the right hand gutter. It felt incredibly dangerous.
Shortly after beginning the second lap and
turning onto the main road I spotted a light someway in the distance. It was
one of those new LED ones and looked like a cyclist. True to the previous lap
the race was all about the right hand gutter. I was still groveling at this
point, but this light played on my mind and I remained vigilant given where we
were all riding! Very quickly about 3 riders in front of me I saw that the
light belonged to a motorcycle, who was by now stationary. It looked to me as
if it was inevitable someone was going to hit him, and sure enough a split
second later someone did exactly that. I can recall seeing the rider flying 6ft
up in the air, as my sub-conscious made me bail for the left hand gutter. I somehow
managed to avoid the bits of flying carbon, and carried on. It was a nasty
crash and I was surprised to learn that the rider who came off was ok. Sadly
the motorcycle rider was not and ended up in the back of an ambulance.
The race was stopped on the second lap as
the police and emergency services were now in attendance at the crash. We
waited for about 20 minutes, but after a stern talking to from the Commissaire
we were under way again. Experience told me that the race was bound to split
and so I made a real effort to move up a bit. And sure enough it did split on
the following lap. Initially I missed the move, and it took a massive limit
effort to grab the last wheel going, of the 20 or so who made the front group.
IG drove hard over the next couple of laps to cement the advantage. The
cross/headwind section was murder as the 50-70W advantage of the Elite boys
could not be negated by sitting in the bunch to anything like the same effect
as usual. But I clung on.
When the attacks returned it was
unsurprisingly IG who were the main protagonists. The race split and reformed several times, before the
elastic finally snapped and a group of 5/6 went up the road. As is often the
way this merely created more attacking and more mayhem in the group behind, and
it soon splintered into 4 separate groups. Through a combination of tactical
astuteness and incredible power I was in the rearmost group by the skin of my
teeth! There were 5 of us, and I was relieved to find that everyone was willing
to work to try and find our way back into the race, or at least not to be
caught by those who were (presumably) still riding behind. Unlike the TV trying
to keep track of who is where, and at what gaps is very difficult when racing,
and more difficult when you are about to expire!
What ensued was a horrendous chase over the
next 20 miles or so. To be fair the group worked well together, and despite my
best poker face I assume I looked as totally fucked as I felt. On some of the
more open stretches we could see that some of the front groups had come
together. Then it looked as if we were pegging their lead. And finally we
started to close them down. Eventually we got into the cars behind them and the
race was back together. Of course, the re-grouping merely prefaced another bout
of ridiculous attacking which lead to the race quickly splitting again, and the
eventual lead group forming. We were left with 9 in our group including one of
the IG boys. I sort of lose track of what happened after this in what I can
only presume is oxygen-deprived amnesia.
The abridged version is that attacks came
and went. I yo-yoed on and off the group a couple of times in the harder times,
but always got back. Oxygen debt is a funny old thing and it is why (for me at
least) I can’t achieve the same heights in training as I can in a race. It
hurts; A lot. Your legs scream at you (obviously) but they are accompanied in a
compendium of pain by your searing lungs, aching chest, and a subconscious
shouting “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING TO ME!!?!?!?” constantly. It takes a
substantial mental effort to ignore all of these obvious physiological pointers
and to keep driving on. I suspect I was within 10-15 seconds of totally blowing
– the point at which you body finally calls “time” – on 5-6 occasions, but I
managed to hold on. But, God it hurt.
Having decided I could probably hang on
until the finish I took at least my fair share of the workload in the last few
laps. I was determined to make the best of this best-of-all training sessions.
Any result would simply be a bonus. I was more than delighted to hear the bell
for the last lap. I say hear, as I couldn’t see it as I only really had tunnel
vision by this point. I knew that if I could make it down the main road for the
last time I would finish. I ended up getting bunged on the front more than I
ought to have done but largely kept riding. I realized with about 3km to go
that I was going to be “leading out” the sprint. I had figured long before that
I would not have any legs to compete up the finishing climb, but set myself an
objective of not finishing last in the group. I failed in this objective , and flew over the line in 20th
place. A point! A solitary point. And yet never has a point been so hard
earned. I shall cherish it to the end of the year! Incidentally the race was
won by James Moss of IG Sigma Sport.
This was the hardest ride I have ever had
after 20 odd years of riding a bike. My heart rate AVERAGED 179bpm for over 2 ½
hours. I was deep into the red so many times I lost count. So what have I learned?
Well, I learned that I can push harder, and go deeper than I ever thought, and
be broadly competitive against riders who are both significantly younger, and a
lot more talented than I am. I learned that I am again riding towards the top
end of 2nd Cat – and it’s early in the season (this is supported by
the numbers I’m seeing in training). And I learned that cycling continues to
provide me with new challenges, new highs and new lows. Roll on next weekend.
