In this blog I’ll give a run down of what my thoughts and strategies were heading into the national championship road race and a breakdown of how the race panned out.
The Route
Situated in North Yorkshire, the route was 7laps of a 17.5km circuit with 275m of elevation gain each lap (in total 122km with 1925m of climbing). This was through a constant flourish of short steep bergs with the main climb “bulmer bank” featuring gradients of 15%. On the day of the race, the majority of the uphills were into the wind with a long fast straight section holding all the tailwind of the course, this meant that there was a long period of rest when surfing in the wheels in the peloton. Finally, the finish was situated on a slight drag and out of a few twists, so although preferably I wouldn’t have wanted the race to come down to a sprint I would’ve had faith in my ability that I could still achieve a podium from this position.
Illness leading into race
My preparation was disrupted going into the race, since the Tour de Gironde I had suffered with a cold that lingered on for 2 weeks, right up until race day. I had managed to maintain riding my bike (although reflecting upon this I should’ve rested) but had to cut any intensity out of my training and generally felt like rubbish. This had effected me in Bath RR and the TT national championships where I felt blocked and suffered with symptoms such as sore throats, coughs and headaches.
On the day of the race I was relieved, after an initial groggy feeling in the morning I was back to feeling fully healthy again. This was a great feeling and gave me confidence that I could give and ride at 100% in the race.
Strategy going into the Race
With the race being just 2 weeks after my success at the Tour de Gironde, I realised that I would likely be marked out as one of the favourites. Despite this, I wanted to win the race - deep down knowing I was very unlikely to win from a bunch sprint I knew I needed to come to the line either solo or with just a few others. For these reasons I had planned to try and hide myself within the bunch for the first half of the race in an attempt to be forgotten about - “out of sight, out of mind”, and then when fatigue would set in, start hitting some attacks.
The Race
Weather on day; fairly chilly (around 11°) with a fair amount of wind
After a short neutral we were released. Heading up bulmer bank for the first time was the first instance the race really pressed on, however, at this early stage it didn’t create any gaps. Further in, (1.25 laps), a small group of 3 gained a marginal gap and I sensed an opportunity to jump across to it. Bridging across to this involved a 2 minute near maximal effort, catching them in the run into bulmer bank. This meant my effort was far from over. The gap was only small to the peloton with others attempting to use the climb as a launch pad to jump across. As I looked back the peloton was strung into pieces with other small groups forming which at the time I thought were going to bridge all the way up to us. Getting past the finish line and onto the decent whilst still having a gap was then our short-term aim; if onto the tailwind we knew it was likely the peloton would relax and hence our gap could grow. In doing this we also prevented anyone joining us so in reflection the reward was definitely greater than the cost of the effort we had just put in.
After this we were able to settle into a more comfortable rhythm. Me and one other rider were sharing the majority of the work load in the group with the others chipping in where they could; particularly on the downhills where I tend to lose speed comparatively to larger riders. From here the gap floated at around 1-2minutes. Half-way through was where I began to start to feel the fatigue kicking in, this was the case with everyone in the break as everyone was pulling weaker turns with 1 member completely sat on. Shortly after this, the commissaries informed us the gap was coming down which was what I had feared. By this point I was quite stressed as I wouldn’t have much left to give if we were caught. I released this was a do-or-die move and we all needed full commitment.
I gained motivation from this and attempted to verbally provide this to the others. Some simple tricks I have learnt over my racing experiences enabled us to stabilise the gap, examples of these were utilising the full road for corners and really squeezing into the downhill sectors to gain speed fast.
Throughout the day I had taken it upon myself to ride all the uphill or slight uphill sections on the front at my own pace, my punchy style is somewhat fatiguing in longer durations however. This was reflected by the initial 4 man break slowly being whittled down to 3 and then to 2 through no accelerations but just a relentless pace being set. With just 2 of us left and the other rider visibly struggling I backed off on the ascents and attempted to get anything he had left out of him.
With the gap still just over a minute I was left solo with 20km to go. I thought to myself this is now or never and would need a really strong effort to hold off a charging peloton. After being out front for so long on a punchy parkour my legs were in agony. I tried my best to attack the climbs like I had been all day and by this point still didn’t think I was going to make it. Suddenly I became very hot, felt sick and had near cramp experiences; it was the worst I’ve ever felt on the bike as I was pushing myself so hard. With 5km to go I was told the gap had grown and I was in disbelief. In arrogance I kept squeezing as hard as I could for the last long straight towards the finish. Only when I saw the finish line did I believe I had won. I was in absolute joy.
Being completely empty I collapsed to sit on the ground almost instantaneously after finishing and was met with my Dad to celebrate.
When looking back I realise I was still riding at a strong rhythm at the end, matching an attacking peloton for the last 20km and finishing with a 1min 36 second gap over 2nd place. For the race I had averaged and normalised a ridiculously high power and even managed to increase it in my final 20 minute effort to the line.
The only unfortunate thing about the day was having to miss nearly all the celebrations after the race as we had to get in the van straight after the race to catch the ferry back to the IOM in competition with the tourists that were coming over for the infamous TT races. All together this was only a minor convenience and I can’t wait to wear the national bands on some custom kit which hopefully arrives ASAP!
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