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Despite having the full week off leading into the final round of the Rapha, I pulled out a fair result, however, doing that for one week sometimes leaves you with fresh legs (hence the good race), but going into the 2nd round of the National Trophy Series the following week, again with another week completely off the bike I wasn’t so confident.
I spent the week on a break in a caravan down on Exmoor with the whole family – not worrying about time, having a few (loads of) beers and generally shut-off from all things biking. Arriving at Leicester Leys sports centre on the Sunday morning though, I was pretty confident of a good ride and when asked how I was feeling by the other competitors I replied ‘yeah really good’ as I was convinced of a good ride. To be honest, on the practice laps of the flat fast course I didn’t feel quite as good as I would have liked but the amount of times I’ve felt awful on the warm up and had a storming race is quite shocking so I was still happy.
The sound of the gun revealed the true story and at no point of the hour race did I ever feel close to feeling fit and even the top ten was out of my sights! So the theory of having many drinks before a race – I can safely say doesn’t work with me. I rode around trying pretty damn hard, only to cross the line in 15th minutes down on the leaders who I was racing in the previous week’s races.
Coming back to full training the following Thursday I wasn’t expecting much of the race because of the poor race the week before but at least I had a few rides under my belt, although to be fair I didn’t take to the comeback all that well and the day before the Inter Area Team Champs I was certainly debating whether or not it was worth racing at all. I was literally smashed from only 3 days of training which I would normally cruise through. Either way I decided that I would race and if I got too sore or didn’t feel great I would simply ease off or drop out. Now, I hate going into a race feeling like this so really I should have stayed home. But as I didn’t want to let Team Wales down, the decision was final. After a few laps of the course I was a little nervous as the course was fast with a lot of sharp climbs but at the same time not very much recovery – so not really the perfect course for my recent dodgy form. I was pleased with the conditions though as I would be able to finally try out my Challenge Griffo Tyres which were a lot better rolling than my previous Vittoria Evo XG’s – although the Vittoria’s do supply better cornering grip, overall I preferred the Griffo’s as the faster rolling is better for them type of courses and they still supplied ample grip on the many off-camber greasy corners, so it’s more a case of which tyre suits your riding style really. But a definite thumbs up for the Griffo’s!
Back to the battle and off the start I twisted my chain in the first few pedal strokes. Now, I’d like to think it was purely down to having too much power but in reality I think it was more just a case of having a weak link. ? For the next half lap I was battling with my jumping gears until I could get to the pits and change bikes, by which time I had dropped to nearly 20th place. Into the pits and onto my spare I put in quite a fast lap getting back into the top 15 and was just 10 seconds or so off the large lead group that had form at the front. I knew at the time that I would need to get into that group if I was to stand any chance of a podium finish but my legs were pretty dead and I just couldn’t quite make contact despite my biggest efforts. For the rest of the race I continued to ride my own race (as fast as I could go) until the finish but by the second half of the race – despite not really feeling any better in myself – I was starting to pick off riders falling off the group in front. By the end of the race I was surprised to cross the line 4th – only 20-30 seconds down on the leaders! Can’t say I’m too disappointed in that, considering the way I’ve been feeling lately and riding most of the race outside the top ten.
Next race for me will be round 3 of the National Trophy in Southampton where hopefully after a full week of training will get a little better result than after a full week of boozing at round 2!!
