I’ve been having a total stinker of a season so far. And this week was no exception. After a really good week of training with a weekend tearing up some Welsh Mountains, I spotted this as I was loading my bike into the car…
I’m just having a total nightmare currently. This is the second Orbea frame that has developed an identical failure. With the first frame this happened to, I sent it to Orbea and they said I had crashed it, refused to accept liability and would not replace it. This simply wasn’t true. I have never crashed either bike and I had to replace it via home insurance. So currently I am borrowing my teammate Paddy’s bike which has a seized seat post so I can’t alter the height. It’s a bit too high and was causing some irritation this week, so I was open to pulling out if the pain got too much. On my prerace ride my knees and Achilles were aching so was on the verge of calling it off the night before.
I’ve been going really well in training this year, my strongest ever numbers but keep getting setback after setback during races and can’t seem to catch a break from bad luck yet. This weekend I had two races, Rick Taylor Memorial RR on the Saturday and Hell of the Halkyns on Sunday.
Rick Taylor started with a 4 minute hill climb, one of my real strengths and would set me up nicely for the 77 mile flat road race in the afternoon. Whilst on Sunday I had “Hell of the Halkyns”, my first TLI race on a very hilly course in North Wales.
Obviously I went into the first race with a negative attitude but just wanted to smash the hill climb, almost solely to give Rick my respects. Whilst I didn’t know him well at all, he was a large figure in the NW and I wanted to give it my best.
I had my usual hill climb routine and felt good warming up. Having recce’d the climb 3 weeks ago I knew that it really flattened out at the top and it was worth going deep on the steep section in the middle. I felt awful during the first 30 seconds or so but when I hit the steep ramp my legs came good and I smashed it to the line. Turns out I actually came 3rd! Matt Holmes (Madison Genesis) won in a time of 3:29, Kieran Savage (my hill climbing rival) stuzzed me by 3 seconds to take 2nd place with me crossing the line after 3:39.
Naturally I was pleased with this, but was still hyper concerned about my knees during the road race. I knew I could not hack a full day breakaway but kept attentive for the first couple of laps. The pace was high and Matt Holmes and Mike Cumins were chasing everything. On lap 3 there were PLENTY of attacks, I was in a few moves but nothing was sticking. It was full on racing and we were flying. We averaged 48.5 kph for 10 minutes and 47.4kph for 20, it was really hard going.
Then during a lull, I was eating a gel when my friend Louis Szymanski attacked and was followed by Matt Holmes. I was not in a position to follow but said “that’s a good move”. Obviously I had to try defend my GC position, so began to try chase. Annoyingly Kieran was countering my chase and refusing to pull through, this really disrupted the pursuit and as I was trying to recover a counter attack of 3 got away.
This was a danger point and I was going full gas to stop it. During the first couple of laps I’d made an alliance with Peter Cocker. He came 4th in the HC and like me had no teammates, so we formed a composite team to preserve our positions. After around a lap of varying attacks and chasing we brought back the group of 3 and following that Matt and Louis. Groupo compacto.
The effort of doing this had taken its toll on everyone and Madison Genesis had stamped their authority on the race. Nothing was getting away. This was my dream, if we ended in a bunch sprint then I would place 3rd overall, my best result in a national race. I had a word with a few of my mates from various teams and they had basically decided to neutralise it. I mean the race wasn’t over but Madison Genesis, Team Crimson and Giant Sheffield had agreed between them to keep the pace high to prevent attacks. Perfect for me.
And that’s just what happened. I kept spinning a light gear to preserve my legs and it came down to a bunch sprint. Not noted for my sprinting I came about 20th but just made sure there were no time gaps to me. There were not and I placed 3rd overall. What a result when I wasn’t going to race!
The race was such a good day out, so well organised and well attended on the hill climb. There was such a good vibe to the race and I think it did Rick’s memory a good service. Especially the presentation in a night club!
I’m just having a total nightmare currently. This is the second Orbea frame that has developed an identical failure. With the first frame this happened to, I sent it to Orbea and they said I had crashed it, refused to accept liability and would not replace it. This simply wasn’t true. I have never crashed either bike and I had to replace it via home insurance. So currently I am borrowing my teammate Paddy’s bike which has a seized seat post so I can’t alter the height. It’s a bit too high and was causing some irritation this week, so I was open to pulling out if the pain got too much. On my prerace ride my knees and Achilles were aching so was on the verge of calling it off the night before.
I’ve been going really well in training this year, my strongest ever numbers but keep getting setback after setback during races and can’t seem to catch a break from bad luck yet. This weekend I had two races, Rick Taylor Memorial RR on the Saturday and Hell of the Halkyns on Sunday.
Rick Taylor started with a 4 minute hill climb, one of my real strengths and would set me up nicely for the 77 mile flat road race in the afternoon. Whilst on Sunday I had “Hell of the Halkyns”, my first TLI race on a very hilly course in North Wales.
Obviously I went into the first race with a negative attitude but just wanted to smash the hill climb, almost solely to give Rick my respects. Whilst I didn’t know him well at all, he was a large figure in the NW and I wanted to give it my best.
I had my usual hill climb routine and felt good warming up. Having recce’d the climb 3 weeks ago I knew that it really flattened out at the top and it was worth going deep on the steep section in the middle. I felt awful during the first 30 seconds or so but when I hit the steep ramp my legs came good and I smashed it to the line. Turns out I actually came 3rd! Matt Holmes (Madison Genesis) won in a time of 3:29, Kieran Savage (my hill climbing rival) stuzzed me by 3 seconds to take 2nd place with me crossing the line after 3:39.
Naturally I was pleased with this, but was still hyper concerned about my knees during the road race. I knew I could not hack a full day breakaway but kept attentive for the first couple of laps. The pace was high and Matt Holmes and Mike Cumins were chasing everything. On lap 3 there were PLENTY of attacks, I was in a few moves but nothing was sticking. It was full on racing and we were flying. We averaged 48.5 kph for 10 minutes and 47.4kph for 20, it was really hard going.
Then during a lull, I was eating a gel when my friend Louis Szymanski attacked and was followed by Matt Holmes. I was not in a position to follow but said “that’s a good move”. Obviously I had to try defend my GC position, so began to try chase. Annoyingly Kieran was countering my chase and refusing to pull through, this really disrupted the pursuit and as I was trying to recover a counter attack of 3 got away.
This was a danger point and I was going full gas to stop it. During the first couple of laps I’d made an alliance with Peter Cocker. He came 4th in the HC and like me had no teammates, so we formed a composite team to preserve our positions. After around a lap of varying attacks and chasing we brought back the group of 3 and following that Matt and Louis. Groupo compacto.
The effort of doing this had taken its toll on everyone and Madison Genesis had stamped their authority on the race. Nothing was getting away. This was my dream, if we ended in a bunch sprint then I would place 3rd overall, my best result in a national race. I had a word with a few of my mates from various teams and they had basically decided to neutralise it. I mean the race wasn’t over but Madison Genesis, Team Crimson and Giant Sheffield had agreed between them to keep the pace high to prevent attacks. Perfect for me.
And that’s just what happened. I kept spinning a light gear to preserve my legs and it came down to a bunch sprint. Not noted for my sprinting I came about 20th but just made sure there were no time gaps to me. There were not and I placed 3rd overall. What a result when I wasn’t going to race!
The race was such a good day out, so well organised and well attended on the hill climb. There was such a good vibe to the race and I think it did Rick’s memory a good service. Especially the presentation in a night club!
Hell of the Halkyns - 1st
Sunday featured a reasonably hilly 50 mile TLI road race around Halkyn. I was in a state first thing, my legs had been aching through the night so I’d struggled to sleep. I was pretty worn out and yawning on the start line but I may as well give it a go.
The race didn’t start too hard but I stayed at the front just patrolling. We turned onto the main climb and I saw Team B38 arch nemesis, a Welshman who cannot be named, attack. I followed him and did that really annoying thing where you just ride next to them in their peripheral vision. Anyway by the top we looked around and we were on our own. He said something like “it’s on now” and I said “50 mile 2-up?”, he agreed and so it began…
We pushed hard for 2 laps, extending the gap before settling into a nice rhythm. After 4 laps, a certain coiffured man was showing signs of fatigue whilst I was feeling surprisingly sprightly. We’d been told the gap was over 3 minutes so we could relax a little. Still I kept on the pressure and verbally promised that I’d attack him on the last lap. He’d been moaning the whole race “this is my first road race this year”, “you know me, I fall apart of 90 minutes”, “I only do 10 mile TT’s”. Eventually I’d had enough and binned him off.
I’d picked my Launchpad, a nice little ramp after a 90-degree corner. I hit it hard, gapped him and solo’d it to the line to take my first road race win in 2 years! My power meter was playing up a little bit so don’t have so much data but for the last 25 minutes I averaged 320W including 340W for the last 11 minutes solo. A good day out!
The race didn’t start too hard but I stayed at the front just patrolling. We turned onto the main climb and I saw Team B38 arch nemesis, a Welshman who cannot be named, attack. I followed him and did that really annoying thing where you just ride next to them in their peripheral vision. Anyway by the top we looked around and we were on our own. He said something like “it’s on now” and I said “50 mile 2-up?”, he agreed and so it began…
We pushed hard for 2 laps, extending the gap before settling into a nice rhythm. After 4 laps, a certain coiffured man was showing signs of fatigue whilst I was feeling surprisingly sprightly. We’d been told the gap was over 3 minutes so we could relax a little. Still I kept on the pressure and verbally promised that I’d attack him on the last lap. He’d been moaning the whole race “this is my first road race this year”, “you know me, I fall apart of 90 minutes”, “I only do 10 mile TT’s”. Eventually I’d had enough and binned him off.
I’d picked my Launchpad, a nice little ramp after a 90-degree corner. I hit it hard, gapped him and solo’d it to the line to take my first road race win in 2 years! My power meter was playing up a little bit so don’t have so much data but for the last 25 minutes I averaged 320W including 340W for the last 11 minutes solo. A good day out!
