Since I saw this one the calendar I added a big circle around it. There aren't many stage races in the UK but I really enjoy them. I like the tactical side as well as the pure strength on the day.
The Bikestow 3 day, consisted of 4 stages. A flat hour race on the Friday evening, a short individual time trial Saturday morning, 80km road race Saturday afternoon and a 100km road race on the Sunday which had a 3 minute summit finish which should suit me well.
Stage 1
This whole thing was a big mess. Being the first stage, everyone was fresh and hyper. The first lap was just stupid, people overtaking around double white lines into oncoming traffic before swinging recklessly back into the group. I just kept to the left out of the way. It's not that people are unfit, it's just they aren't experienced enough to race properly.
Being a flat, hour long race, I predicted that nothing would happen this stage so I was aiming to save as much energy as possible for the next two days. This worked well on the whole. I saw things get spicy on lap two so followed one move but other than that, I just hid. I averaged a mere 220W and yet we averaged 47.8kph, so some people were trying hard.
As we approached the final 3km, I decided to move up to the front. I was slipping along the inside when I got wiped out. Somebody clipped wheels and flipped into me. I didn't even get chance to break and they caused me to crash hard into a bush. I knew immediately I was ok but it's always a disaster crashing.
I picked myself up, straightened out my handlebars, and set off to the finish line disappointed in a wasted weekend. I was pretty annoyed, my knee was all swollen up and it hurt to turn the pedals. My target race was derailed by some naivety and I felt a bit hard done by.
I rolled towards finish, sulking. But approaching the 1km to go banner there was a queue of cars. This struck me as odd, the road should be clear... the race has only just gone past? I went to pass the cars only to discover complete carnage.
I felt like I was in that Donald Glover meme when he walks into the house and it's on fire. There were cyclists everywhere, it was actually horrible. Apparently someone overlapped wheels right at the front of the group and took out pretty much the entire peloton. I won't dwell on the incident but even though I caught up the crash, I still finished in the top half of the stage. It turned out 63 people (including me) crashed that stage and there were 18 non-starters on Saturday.
Two riders won the race with a 9 second advantage over the rest of the peloton. They also earned 10s and 7s time bonus for first and second putting us all 19s behind as every crashed rider got given the same 9 second deficit.
Glumly with my crash, the goal of winning this race appeared to vanish. I got to my hotel room later that evening, raised my leg on three pillows soothed the swelling with a glass of ice from the pub below. I had to limp around the room and I wasn't even sure I'd start the next day. I still had to take the transponder back to HQ first thing, so that might persuade me to at least try the TT.
Stage 2 - 17th
I woke up after a mixed night sleep with my knee feeling slightly better. It was swollen but the overnight rest had helped and I was cautiously optimistic. Once I signed on, I began my long warm up. I wanted to make sure I could pedal properly and that the bike was ok after the crash.
It was mainly, I just had to meddle with the handlebars and brakes a little bit. The TT was only short so I was never going to gain or lose much time. I just wanted to be up there.
It felt like I paced it well, and my knee wasn't too bad in the end. The long, steady warm up had helped. I averaged 420W for 3:30 which placed me 17th on both the stage and overall GC. Interestingly the winners of stage 1, Joe Brookes and Ben Pierce, also won the time trial. Putting a further 9 seconds into me. The time trial, whilst short, opened up some time gaps between us and the hierarchy started to fall into place.
Stage 3 - 2nd
Stage 3, was not the hilliest course, it was 82km with only 700m of climbing, which again made it a fast. My strategy was this:
I had no teammates to control anything so why would I waste time chasing down attacks.
The race leader Joe Brookes also had 9 teammates and he's clearly going well. It's down to them to chase/control the race.
In order to win, I need to put time into everyone in the top 15 but particularly top 2 so I want to not let either of them get away without me. Ideally I would get away with neither of them there.
The course is too fast to get away solo, I can only break away with a group.
I cannot win by sitting in, I have to gain time. It's worth talking the risk to attack and get away.
The first lap was fraught with attacks. None from me. I sat in 20th wheel, concentrating hard on keeping position and an eye on what was going on. This was working perfectly. Halesowen were chasing every attack, they were just burning themselves whilst I rested.
During the second lap, I became more active, particularly when a spicy group of 15 got away. I was blocked in initially and but I managed to follow someone else attacking, I then attacked over the top of them to bridge solo. It was a fairly big effort of 380W for 4 minutes but I would rather do that than let a sizable group get away without me.
This wasn't the winning move, I could tell when I got there. It was too big and disorganised so I attacked over the top of it. This split this breakaway down but Halesowen used their numbers to sew the whole race back together in the next quarter of a lap. During this time there were two riders in a breakaway with about a minute advantage.
In the next couple of kilometres, there were some more probing attacks. People were clearly on the ropes and when a BCC race team rider attacked, only I followed. I paced hard on the climb and let him draft me so we could work together. We were joined quickly by Chris Booth (Giant Kendal) and David Griffiths (Holoham Coaching). The four of us got our heads down and shredded it until we caught the two riders up the road.
It was obviously demanding but it was worth it because we were gaining time on the peloton. We weren't getting any time gaps from the organisers, but with less than half a lap to go, we were informed that we only had a 22 second advantage. I'd been in the break pulling big turns for 35 minutes now and that was all we had gained. Our heads visibly dropped. So I attacked again.
This time I dropped two riders for good and the other three who came with me completely committed to the line. The attack worked well because we shed the two weaker riders and it instigated some fire into our breakaway. I felt like the strongest there and when some riders stopped pulling turns with cramp I would do double pulls to maintain our gap. I was suffering now but if I gave up, it would have all been for naught. I would rather commit and try gain time than give up. Of course if we stuck, we would gain bonus seconds too.
With 5km to go, we still weren't caught and I couldn't see the peloton (meaning it was larger than the 20 second gap).
With 3km to go, surprisingly, we got caught by two more riders, I initially thought it was the two we dropped but no. One was 2nd overall, Ben Pierce. Not ideal for me. He must have done a monster effort to bridge to us. It was at least 25 seconds closed in 12 minutes or so. But as soon as he caught up we got him pulling turns to help us.
We approached the one km to go banner and we let Ben sit on the front and drag us to the line. This sort of makes tactical sense from him, he has to put as much time into the leader as possible. He lead us out perfectly and then got obliterated in the sprint.
I knew I still had a sprint in my legs and have learned not to got too early now. We hit 200m to go and I was in third wheel, not blinking first. Then we hit 150m. Still not blinking. Then Darren Rider, launched his sprint.
Bang, I launched mine too. I passed him. I was going to win! Then with 10m to go, my legs started to fade and he came back. He passed me, right at the finish line, snatching the victory. I actually did a good sprint, hitting over 1000W and held 820W for 12s but it wasn't enough to win.
I did however gain 7 bonus seconds and our extra effort in the last half lap extended our lead to 32seconds over the peloton. This took me to 3rd on GC behind Ben and Darren. Not only was Ben distanced by two seconds in the sprint but he also missed out on the bonus seconds. So whilst he gained time on the bunch he will it was a net loss to the rest of the break. I doubt that was worth the effort of leading us out. Whilst it put him into the leaders jersey, he was now a marked man for the final stage.
In the break I averaged 300W for 50 minutes but it was well worth the 40s net time gain. I also heard that Joe Brookes was forced to chase hard last lap to close the gap to us. The curse of the yellow jersey.
I've been doing a fair amount of back to back hard training days this year in preparation for this weekend. My strategy was to put the yellow jersey under as much pressure as possible and just keep attacking him. I only had to gain 16s on him and 7s on second place. If I was climbing well enough I could gain that on the final climb.
The race started hard, with attacks from Joe Brookes (currently 7th overall but former leader) and Darren Rider (currently 2nd). I wasn't panicking whilst the race leader, Ben Pierce, was. As predicted, he was chasing the attacks hard. This perfectly suited me. I sat on his wheel and as soon as he closed the gap to the main attack in the opening kilometres, I immediately hit him again.
I surged past and got a gap. I wasn't necessarily hoping this was going to be a winning move I just wanted to hurt everyone else chasing me. A couple of guys came with me but our lead didn't last and a couple of minutes later we were caught. This was right at the base of the longest climb on the circuit. Joe Brookes set the pace with me in second place. I was unwilling to attack here, but sure enough two riders were. It was a tactically good move, Adam Robertson and James Satoor immediately got a gap and hammered the descent and main road afterwards.
Not long after I was on the wheel of Lance Childs when he attacked. I judged it was a good move and followed him. It was actually pretty hard, it took me ages to close the gap to Lance before we then worked to close the gap to the other two.
But once we made it, I checked back and the peloton was unresponsive. This was absolutely perfect for me. I only needed 16s and we had easily got this. Now we just had to finish it off.
The four of us worked well, we pressed on hard for 2 laps and extended the gap to 90 seconds. We weren't content with this and we were clearly fading a bit as a unit, with James pulling less. This was tactically sensible because his teammate was leading before this stage.
We stopped getting time gaps but when I checked back with one and a half laps to go, I saw a small group catching us. This would be both good and bad. Good because we would get more help but bad because now we had more people to compete against.
Joe Brookes and Chris Booth were there, they were directly behind me on GC so I had to mark them. Fortunately the leader and 2nd place weren't so I was still the virtual leader. I now needed to be defensive rather than aggressive.
Surely enough there were some attacks on this last lap but I covered them all without going too deep into the red. I was just sewing the group back together. This was my tactical plan. Just don't let anything get away until the summit finish. They will try but I will not be able to win if I let them go.
With around 10-15km to go, another group of 4 joined us. Again there were riders in the top 10 but behind me in GC. To my delight, there were three riders from the Deeside Thistle team. They were trying to win the team classification and they just sat on the front keeping pace trying to distance the rest of the peloton.
This was just so incredibly perfect for me. I had to do zero work. As virtual leader in the GC, they should have been making me pull but they just let me sit in.
Once we hit the final 3km, there were quite a few attacks. Particularly from Jamie Philpott but also Joe Brookes. I had to chase them down. This wasn't ideal and it put me on the back foot but once I brought them back, I had quelled the mutiny.
I think it was Jamie Philpott who set the pace into the climb and we arrived as a group of 13. Before the race started my plan was to go from the base and try to distance everyone but as I was virtual leader I decided to defend and let them set the pace. Hoping it wouldn't be too hard for me.
Jamie went hard from the base and was putting me in some difficulty but when the gradient eased a bit we entered the final 500m. I wasn't close to being dropped and it was all looking good. Now could I win the stage?
We hit 200m to go and Joe started to sprint for the line. I couldn't match him but stopped the rot to finish second on the stage a mere two seconds behind Joe. This gave me the overall victory by 8 seconds!