Tom Ward: My first road race - Elveden Road Race

Last weekend I finally got around to doing a road race. I’ve been thinking about doing one for a while, and have even entered a couple in the past but because of the bizarre way road cycling works my entries were rejected. No such trouble for the first round of the Elveden series opener held on a private estate and immaculate closed roads. After a quick trip down to Giant Radlett to collect a TCR Advanced SL on the Friday I was ready. It would perhaps have been preferable to at least have a short ride on the bike before race day but there was no time so a 45 minute warm up and course recce would have to do.

Shiny new Bike and kit, that didn't last long!

The weather was doing its best to put people off with rain, wind and temperatures of 4 degrees but a hardy 89 turned up for my race. I have never ridden in a bunch that big before and didn’t really know what to expect. All of the advice I had been given in the lead up to the race was ‘stay at the front’. That’s all very well but I had no idea what the pace would be like or how easy that would be as I assumed everyone would have the same idea, especially given the spray from other peoples wheels if you were riding anywhere other than on the front.

Staying out of the way near the front

Oddly I found the pace fairly gentle and it was easy to move up the pack and find myself on the front by halfway around the first lap. The course was basically a 3.7 mile square with 3 sharp corners and 1 gentle bend just before the start finish and a small climb. The pace picked up out of the sharp corners but other than that it was easy to sit in the front 8 and preserve energy. Unfortunately it was so cold that this meant I could hardly feel my fingers and my legs weren’t really awake.

On the second lap I decided to stretch my legs a bit. It wasn’t really a concerted attack but I got quite a large gap which I maintained for a couple of corners before sitting up with the idea of dropping back. At this point another guy attacked and caught me shouting at me to work together to get away which sounded like fun for a while. However, after about a mile of ‘through and off’ it became apparent we weren’t really making any headway and it was unrealistic to hold off the pack for 6 more laps so I sat up again and dropped back to the pack while he pushed on until being caught at the start of the next lap. For the next 5 laps I just sat in trying to keep my position at the front and not get caught in any crashes. No-one made a concerted attack so the pace was fairly relaxed.

Going through the start finish for the final time the bell rang and everyone got a bit excited and upped the pace. At this point I thought ‘here we go, this must be where it gets hard’ but alas, it didn’t. The pace dropped again and even out of the final corner there wasn’t too much urgency. The final straight was into a headwind and slightly up hill so I stayed in wheels for as long as possible. There was a lot of shouting of ‘Hold your line’ as people jostled for positions behind me before someone’s front wheel caught my left foot which was followed my more shouting and a bike cartwheeling into the bushes on my right. At this point I kicked for the line, mostly as I wanted to steer clear of any further carnage. I caught the leader with about 50 metres to go and held on for the win.

The emotion at the time was more of surprise than anything else. I wasn’t in the right gear and spun out during the sprint but my fingers were too cold to change gear and I didn’t have the burning feel of lactic acid that normally follows a balls-out sprint. Still it was enough on the day and I was happy to collect enough points to get promoted into Cat 3 on my first attempt and got a cheeky trophy and £40 too. The next emotion was of being freezing cold and shivering so much I couldn’t even hold a cup of tea without throwing it all over myself! I’m not sure when my next road race will be but hopefully I’ll have chance to do another one later in the season.

Thanks to Giant Radlett for their support and the loan of a bike for the race!