Last year I was pretty slack in terms of racing, a situation I want to reverse this year, so on Sunday morning it was time to line up for our monthly club races at Heffron. This was also doubling as our B-Grade 2014 Club Champs, as our previous attempts to hold it had been cancelled; due to rain on the first attempt, and due to a bad crash on the second. So, we would have a race within a race; riders from other clubs going for the overall win, and also the first three SUVelo riders across the line who would comprise our Club Champs podium.

I wasn’t really hoping for much as there are a few guys like Rob Cheng and particularly Peter Ristkes who have really trained up a storm last year and progressed in leaps and bounds, so my plan, such as it was, was to hang on for the first half of the race and see if any opportunities presented themselves in the second.

The gun went and we settled in to a decent pace. I stayed around the middle of the pack of 30, paying attention to where the wind was and trying to position myself in advance so that I’d be nice and sheltered down the main straight.

Image © Joshua Nicholson

Things were going well for the first few laps. Holding position was easy and I was cornering well and not leaving gaps out of the turns. I had a near-miss when a guy in front of me hit the brakes and swerved into my from wheel, but it was only a slight tap so I managed to stay upright. Overlapping wheels is probably the most common cause of a crash, and it’s always your own fault, as guarding your front wheel is your problem. I’m pretty confident I wasn’t overlapping with this guy and it was only his dab of the brakes which put me in that position, but it was still a timely reminder to concentrate!

After a few more laps I was starting to feel the effort and the constant accelerating out of each turn was starting to take its toll. The bell sounded for the mid-race prime and everything stepped up a notch as the sprinters got into position. The second half of the lap felt tough and I went bang at the beginning of the finish straight, pulling over to one side to stay out of everyone’s way. Race over.

When I pulled up at the finish line I learned that we’d been lapping at almost 41km/h, which is rocket fast for B-Grade. 39km/h would be a normal pace for us, and indeed, B-Grade on the day was riding as fast as A-Grade, so going bang halfway through the race wasn’t quite so disappointing.

Nonetheless, with some matter-of-fact post-race analysis it’s clear I have an issue with decision making mid-race, when the going gets tough. Once the prime was over the pace settled down again for a bit, so I should have just stuck it out for a little longer and I would have had a chance to recover a bit before things picked up again for the race finish. I know that’s how the race unfolds, but never processed that information when deciding to stop. A bit stupid in hindsight!

Oh well, back in the racing saddle at least!

This morning was my first attempt at riding B-Grade at the Club’s monthly race. At a few kilos heavier and a few watts less powerful than when I won my C-Grade races last season, it was always going to be hard work.

With B-Grade not starting until 8:30, I definitely enjoyed the extra hour in bed over riding C-Grade, but this enthusiasm soon dissipated when I headed off to LaPa on my warm-up ride — it was quickly apparent that my legs were not in the mood for racing today.

I arrived at Heffron a bit early, figuring I’d catch the end of the C-Grade race, only to find that the dodgy weather had confined almost everyone to their beds. I saw Stu ride past so shouted some encouragement, though it turned out that he was chaperoning the B-Grade Women’s race as no-one was there to race C-Grade Men’s.

It looked like being a sparse field for the A & B races too, though more people started arriving as the start time approached. We ended up with about 12 in B as the gun went and we rolled out at a fairly sedate pace. The course was damp in patches and no-one really wanted to crack the whip, so the first lap was really slow before one of the Turramurra guys decided to pick things up a bit on the second lap. From then on things were a bit quicker, but rather than being a consistent pace it was on/off. I spent the first few laps up near the front, then did about three quarters of a lap on the front before dropping to the back for some drafting and to see how things panned out.

The pace was fairly manageable, though the surges were a bit tiring and started my legs whinging. As we came on to the main straight to the bell for the prime lap, things hotted up a lot and I ended up with a gap to close into the headwind. That proved to be my undoing, my legs went bang as we entered the squircle and that was the end of my race.

Nick took off on a breakaway with about two laps to go and just managed to hang on. Ben won the sprint for second and one of the Turramurra guys was third.

My Race Stats: 25min,37.6km/h average, 283W Normalised Power

Tomorrow I’m making my track debut! As another part of keeping my cycling going over the winter (or restarting it at least), I’ve decided to give track racing a go. There’s a race series called RAW (Race All Winter) which started in June, runs every Friday night through winter, and is held at Dunc Gray Velodrome, built specially for the Sydney Olympics. No slumming it for me. We’re talking world-class facilities!

A few triathlon friends had been talking about it last year, saying how enjoyable it is and I’d been thinking about giving it a go this year. Two weeks ago I bit the bullet and bought myself a Felt TK3 track bike.

A Felt TK3…

Now the astute amongst you will no doubt have noticed that there’s no brakes. That’s not such a big deal as it’s a 250m track, there are no obstacles and everyone can only go in one direction. If someone in front of you crashes it usually happens so quick that even if you had brakes you wouldn’t be able to stop anyway. The best you can hope for is that you can swerve around them.

There are also no gears. That’s standard fare for track bikes. You can change gears, but only be manually removing one cog/chainring and replacing it with a different one, before the race starts. Once you’re moving your top speed is determined solely by how fast you can turn your legs. Top track cyclists can hit 160rpm+ whereas I struggle with about 110rpm!

So, tomorrow night’s my debut. I’ve never ridden a track bike, and never been on a velodrome, though I did head out to the first RAW night a few weeks ago to take photos and to see what it was all about. I basically sign on as a novice and they tell me everything I need to know. There’ll be other novices to race against and you can stay in the novice grade until you’re comfortable on track, at which point you can step up to Div 5. Div 1 sees a few Masters World Champions mixing it up with Australia’s stars of the future preparing for the Junior World Championships in Moscow this August. Should be fun!