Friday, July 1, 2011

Derby Mercury Road Race

Derby Mercury Road Race, 05/06/2011
West Midlands Road Race League Round 4
Location - Burton upon Trent
Course - 4.5 laps of rolling loop with 1 main climb and a steep climb to finish
Weather - Cool Start but soon warmed up during the race.

With my target events for the season only a few weeks away i am currently in a build period and piling on the training stimulus with pretty intense sessions every week. Some have been maybe a little to intense as i have been struggling to recover from some of the savagely hard intervals i have been subjecting myself to and have to had to re-jig my weeks in order to allow for a little more recovery. The fatigue is set deep in my legs at the moment but soon it will be taper time and all of that underlying fatigue will be shed in favor of freshness, that will be the big pay off and worth all of the suffering.

At the moment however i am trying to do 2 things. one is to keep up the training stimulus is order to promote gain in fitness that are much harder to come by theses days, and two is to keep racing my scheduled events and try to win a few and gain points towards series events such as the WMRRL which is what today's race, The Derby Mercury RR is part of. After a very tough session on Thursday did everything in my power to recover as best i could before Sunday's race, i stuck to a solid post session recovery plan, rested Friday and then did a tune up ride on Saturday, however i could tell during this short ride that i was still feeling Thursday in my legs without a doubt.

Well, there was nothing on i could do about it now as i was on my way to the HQ and trying to remind myself of the route from last years race. The key part of this race is the very end as it turns off the main course and finished on a very steep and narrow climb which suits me down to the ground, well on a day when i have good legs anyway. As we rode off through the neutralized zone at 10am i some friendly banter between me and some fellow races before the flag dropped to signal the start of the race. With the first few accelerations of the bunch i could tell that my legs just didn't want to play along so i kept in the bunch for a while hoping that i would loosen up a Little. As we completed we continued round the first lap i realised that this was in fact a completely new course and ended up making a very silly mistake early on. As it was this course had a pretty big hill in it which just seemed to appear and as it did i was at the back trying to wake my legs from the dead, whilst i was doing this all of the strong riders were at the front as we hit the slope. Typically the bunch began to split and i was floundering at the back getting boxed in, as we crested the top the peloton was i two and i was in the wrong group. I had to dig deep, go around some of the weaker riders and bridge the gap to the front group, thankfully i closed the gap and brought the race back together in doing so. That was to close and not a mistake that i would make again although the climb was a lot harder for me than it should have been due to my terrible legs!!

The pace throughout the race was generally high and not one move could get a big enough gap to stick, even with the climb. The series leader, Mike Jones, began to make some committed moves on the final 2 laps but he was a marked man and these came to nothing. I began to feel better on the last lap and almost got a break going with Will Penn from Mammoth Cycles as he put the power down on the final climb and i went with him, i rolled through in order to keep the pace up but again it all came back together. So it looks like it would be down to slog out on the final climb which was now not to far away.

The thing i remembered most about the climb from last year was that i was very narrow and i got boxed in as i was to far back, i was going to do make the same mistake twice. I managed to hold my position at the front of the bunch really well for the entire last lap and i turned on to the finish road about 10 back. as the climb began the pace remained brisk whilst Matt Clarke of halesowen took a suicidal flyer off the front, its the kind of move that i had thought of doing as did most others in the bunch , but to be honest, i was to scared to throw away a chance by doing it and risking coming no where. As the climb reached its steepest point my low weight came it to its own and i managed to keep the momentum up as other began to flounder, i was only a few bikes lengths behind the 4 riders in front and i was closing the gap fast but it was little to late as i crossed the line. However, it was to little late for us all as the crazy Halesowen rider, Matt Clarke who took the flyer, defied the odds and held on to take one of the most deserved wins i can thing off. At the end of the day, i knew that i was strong enough to win the race had i made such a move but like i say, i was to scared, Matt wasn't and it payed off for him, big time.

I'm happy with my result which was officially 6th and even more so given that i felt i was one of the strongest on the final climb even though i knew i was far from my best and my legs felt terrible. I cant wait until i go in to a race tapered and in top form as i know i will feel like a different rider.

Many thanks to Derby Mercury CC for putting on a great race and to all the Marshall's who made it so safe.

Ride safe
Dan Bill

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