It was late Saturday night and I was in the pub having a nice bit of pizza (ham and pineapple) with my girlfriend when I got send the below picture. My teammate Issac had a training crash and broke his elbow on the eve of the Tim James memorial road race.
I'm not sure whether it was the 2 pints talking at this point but I decided to call the organiser and see if I could replace him. I could, so after 2 more pints we called it a day and went home to sleep.
I was very unprepared, I had no kit ready, bike needed cleaning, I was unshaved, had done 3 hours hilly training the day before and didn't even know the course or how long the race was! After a particularly early start for The Buzzard I rushed home and got myself ready.
The race was the Tim James memorial road race after the sad loss of Tim to cancer last year. It was held on the Upton course near Pontefract. It's a speedy, almost pan flat course and with limited wind on the day it was going to be rapid. We had 7 guys out of 80 starters and the plan was to get at least one of us in the break and if it was to end in an unlikely bunch sprint to lead out Leon or Joey.
We had heard rumours Swift-Carbon race team wanted to keep it together for sprinter Chris Latham and we wanted a breakaway so the race was on.
As a team, the boys were all pretty active from the start. Everyone was relentlessly both attacking and following moves. I was in plenty myself and spent a lot of time drilling it on the front chasing moves we had missed. The speed was furious, in the first hour we averaged 49.2kph! It was pretty easy sat in the main group to be fair but as soon as you got off the front it was unbelievably hard. The actual raw watts needed to sustain a gap over 80 riders at that speed is huge.
There were a few tasty looking groups that looked as though they could stay away but someone would inevitably chase it back. At one point when the pace was a huge group of about 20 got away. We had Leon in it but that was all.
I had actually managed to follow a group of 4 who chipped off the front as we passed through a series of roundabouts. We were really not that far behind the break so hammered it to make it across. I was doing the final bridge when Tom Mazzone from Saint Piran saw me and started yelling to stop chasing him. He was upset I was chasing my teammate Leon down but I was just bridging to help him nad have 2 in the large group. But what had actually happened was the peloton had caught the tail of my group so it looked like I was dragging everyone across when actually that wasn't the intention.
Either way I bridged the gap and it was groupo compacto once again. I think had I not done it, it would have come back anyway as people seemed keen to chase everything. As the laps ticked off, the situation remained pretty unchanged. There would be attacks subsequential chases and by the last lap the bunch sprint was inevitable.
I genuinely wanted to lead out one of the actual sprinters but couldn't/didn't really want to move up to the front as it had started raining. I very much didn't want to get involved in an incident when I have bigger goals later in the year.
On the final corner through the roundabout there was indeed a pileup and Leon unfortunately came down. He was alright as he fell in the grass but obviously couldn't sprint for the win. He didn't crash quite as hard as his brother who snapped his stem (see pic below)
People kept telling me how sketchy the finish was but in 50th place it was actually very chilled! In all we averaged over 48kph, which is a record for me. It was the same length as last week but 40 minutes faster. I was active for a good portion of the race and was pleased with my form considering my preparation. Didn't quite get a result as a team but we have bigger goals and asI said last week, the more racing I get in my legs the better I'll be.
Interestingly for the second week in a row the lap record was taken. People have clearly turned up racing with some fitness and it was once again a very hard race. From personal experience I can confirm that with limited races since March 2020 I've been able to train hard consistently and craft some real form. It appears everyone else has done that too and I think with the racing drought people are so keen to race that they don't mind burying themselves to have a good race.