First Road Race!

Did my first ever road race at Thruxton yesterday. Good news on the weather front as contrary to BBC pessimism it was nice and sunny if a bit blowy.

Got to the start nice and early to register and then did a bit of warm up on my Roubaix, its first outing of 2008. It felt light as a feather after the winter Giant, though I did notice every bump in the tyres.

I had a lot of butterflies in the stomach leading up to the start. They got worse when I saw how big the field was, too many to count but included riders with numbers up to 70+ on top of which were a number of women riders who would be sharing their race with ours.

Started at the back of the bunch which turned out to be a bit of a mistake. Last time I was at Thruxton it was on a motoring experience day and I was blasting round in a Porsche turbo at 100mph. Very different having to do it under your own power but some things remained the same, especially the importance of getting corners right. I took these too slowly at first and suffered the "concertina" effect I had heard about. This is when the leading riders in the group accelarate away and you need to ride twice as hard to keep in touch with the group. It took me several laps to work out how to ride most efficently and keep in touch and the graph above shows this with several power spikes in the earlier laps (which is me riding like billio to get onto someones wheel again.)

Found it does not pay to be a gentleman. On one corner I heard a woman warn she was on my inside so I braked to let here through. Everyone else went as well and I was all my own and took a bit of puff to get back.

This was a bit easier because other learning is that laps are of two halves, as the speed graph above shows. Downhill, with a following wind we pushed 60kph (I did not realise I was going this fast at the time,..) Then you turn, first across, then into the wind and up a hill. Here the whole bunch grinds to a halt. Knowing this gives a chance to catch up on each lap (though only in the beginners race, I understand in higher races this is where you push, trying to get the others to crack).

Started to very much get into the swing of things as the laps passed by. So much so that by the end of the 9th lap (of 10 it turned out though start sheet said 11) I was at the front. Only problem was that I had not been counting and when my earpiece came out (true to habit I was listening to trance music) I sat up to put it back in. Just about then I heard the bell go and everyone disappeared and I was on my tod. I set off in chase and caught half the stragglers but could not latch onto the lead group. Still I ended up around 20th which wasnt bad for a first attempt.

(The speed graph above shows my error very well. Each lap is shown as a nice smooth V except for the last which has a little W at the bottom which was me speeding up, slowing down to put ear piece back in, hearing bell and trying to speed up again). Still the last lap wasnt bad, I did most of it solo and still managed over 40kph. Interesting learning on the hill on last lap as well, my cadence was below 70 and I was finding it hard work. I kicked down a few gears and up into the 80/90 rpm zone and power shot up.

Overall watts for the race were 235/264NW, so not too tough, it was just the occasional that caused a bit of pain, plus the last lap. HR averaged 154 with a max of only 171. Cadence was mostly above 80 but slowed on the hills (need to change down). Decoupling was very good -0.5%.

Felt a bit of a prat for getting last lap wrong. As bit of punishment went for a 60 minute post race ride, first 30 mins I pushed a bit and it was a bit harder than the race itself. Got home and did a couple of hard workouts on indoor bike then recovery, catching up on the Sopranos.

Definitely enjoyed the experience. Another race on next week so will give it another go, hopefully learning the while.