Crystal Palace: May 18th

[Toks]

3/4s

If you didn’t know I’ll tell you. The racing weather God lives in a pokey single bedroom flat in London SE19. I haven’t really got time to get into it now but – a combination of the ‘butterfly effect’ and the fact he’s not mad keen on Tuesday evenings and possibly some other complicated stuff you wouldn’t really understand always determines whether racing at Crystal Palace is a goer or not. There; so now you know. Highbury, Angel, Elephant & Castle, Camberwell, Dulwich Village and final I’m a stones throw away from London’s very own Eiffel Tower. One swooshing descent later and I arrive in the park to find Maurice Burton’s son in a two man breakaway (Youth race) – testament to the fact, choose your parents carefully and you to can ride your bike very fast

The first lap is always a wake up call. I hit the drag at tempo and cruise towards the line on my lonesome – thankfully it’s just the warm up. I meet a wall of cyclists at least six bikes deep and manage to negotiate a little bit of real estate for myself in the second row of 3/4th riders. The commissionaire effuses about circuit filtering changes, the lap board, bell signals and keeping to your own race. He wishes the E12 riders “good luck” and 30sec later we follow.

I’m tentative and it shows. After three laps I’m in the back quarter of the bunch. The pace is manageable but inevitably it’s still hard work. I’m not sure how many of us there is but I’m constantly fighting for wheels with numbers 61 and 58 so it’s definitely a big field for Palace. Five laps in and I start to plot my route to the front. But it’s thwarted but my rather rusty bunch skills, a failure to hold wheels on both significant bends and any number of annoying thirty and forty something blokes who seem to think its big game of “Simon Says…”

We all make up the typical racing demographic of course but that’s not the complete story. Upfront tonight 15 year old, Hackney CC rider, Tao Geoghegan Hart is riding like a pro and just a few years older 54 year old vet Quentin from Mosquito Bikes is beautifully ensconced just behind the front ten places. I bet he probably negotiated the whole race on an average of 200 watts. One of my team mates Steve is also riding well – always in the top twenty places while Kieran my other club mate is chilling near the back with me. At just over the half way point things ease up a touch and I slide up into the top twenty.
“I thought we’d lost you’, muses Russell from Norwood Paragon. “Not yet”, I reply smartly pretending to concentrate. Unfortunately despite five years of racing I don’t do concentrating very well especially not in big bunches. Inevitably, bad positioning sees me return from whence I came. It’s cool! I tell you what’s really cool though, the guy in front of me on the black Pinerello Dogma and the Light weight wheels. £8000 baby!

Someone presses the accelerator on lap eighteen and I have to put in an ugly teeth gritting effort to stay in touch. A lap later I can hear Mr Dogma breathing heavily. Not so cool. I smile to myself and slide past him next to the super composed Quentin. Damn I’m very Jealous. It’s a good turn out tonight. Lots of new London Dynamo faces are peppered throughout the race; the 2nd biggest race crew are local Dulwich Paragon. In fact for a few laps I sit on a guy with the power tap wheel just for the heck of it.

Four laps to go and I brush handlebars with Mosquito bike owner Phil; we negotiate mini groups of pitiful looking dropped riders all mostly compromised by ‘threshold” shortcomings. Number thirty-eight, in a ridiculous tangerine get up, is all ‘elbows and knees’ and I annoyingly concede space to him one too many occasions for my liking. On the last lap I round him and a few others whilst emptying my anaerobic tank on the final surge up the drag. My first race of the season is thankfully over, fifteenth place I reckon.

Well done Sylv. 10th in E12's i think

[Sylv]

Well that was weird - was feeling the best in weeks (months?) yesterday, yet blew out in quite spectacular fashion.

Riding to and from work I couldn't feel my legs, couldn't feel the wind, and going up the Palace I could hardly feel the climb - full rest day on Monday seemed to have done wonders after the weekend's racing. I had a good feeling about the race, last time I had such a feeling it was before the Cristalp last year which was encouraging. I was going to get in that darn break. Told a few people, which probably jinxed me!

Good to see Toks riding, and looking pretty trim despite what he's been saying. Shadow and Kieran joined him in the 3/4. After a classic "can't find my pedal" start I was able to size the E12 field from the back, approx 25 riders. Right, move further up, don't do anything silly, and when it goes, go. It started fast, and it did go, as usual up the climb, though earlier than I had expected, only a handful of laps in. A hard attack but I was going with it, and by the time we'd reached the top I thought that's it, we've made it. But next time I looked back - was everyone still too fresh? - the bunch was there, though stringed behind me.

So next time up the hill, guess what - it went again - harder. Very, very hard. I gave it all but soon felt that sinking feeling, dying legs - I probably burnt three matches in one go going up the hill, but the break had gone. John S tried to bridge solo but soon came back to us. James Waite did the same and was able to make it. I was now in danger of being left behind by the bunch, my legs still burning. Had to give it all to stay on, and then all I could do was try and keep in touch for the next few laps whilst the chase was on. Luke Wallis, Taylor Johnson and a very strong Sigma guy (don't think it was Gareth Montgomery as he was in the break? Or did he bridge later?) were probably pulling the strongest turns, with Jake "Gibbo killer" Martin seemingly attacking every now and then. It took me more than 6 laps to recover, enough to start taking a few turns, and even then I'm note sure I'd fully recovered.

We could see the break of 5 not gaining much ground - for about 5 laps they were coming back towards us as we were crossing the finish line - and amazingly my average speed actually increased for a while, from 40.5 to 40.7, after the split. Somehow though with the strongest riders working in the break, and us not being all that organised (several teams had riders in the break), we weren't going to catch them. With about 5 to go I realised that Matt Seaton was in the race, as he went for a couple solo attacks, brought back. It was getting nervous towards the hour with several aborted attacks, and then coming up to the sprint I had the choice of Jake or John's wheel - Jake's was probably the obvious choice but I picked John who got behind him for extra reliability . Up the hill and Luke Wallis managed to get in between us two, and even attempt to overtake, but we crossed the line in that order, at 57km/h.

I was quite disappointed, but the good thing is that my legs felt ok after, and today too.

[quote]E/1/2s
Ian Paine, Hugo Humphreys, James Waite, Kevin Knox and Gareth Montgomerie broke clear and soon had a good lead back to the bunch.
As this group rounded the final turn Paine and Humphreys had jumped away on the hill, and the race went to former. Jake Martin led in the bunch at approx. 10 seconds plus after they had cut the lead groups advantage.

1 4 Ian Paine London Dynamo 1
2 6 Hugo Humphreys Mosquito Bikes 2J
3 14 James Waite Pearson Cycles 2
4 26 Kevin Knox Dulwich Paragon 1V
5 24 Gareth Montgomerie Sigma RT E @ 3 secs
6 1 Jake Martin OneLife J2 @ 13 secs
7 30 John Sadler TriSportNews
8 19 Luke Wallis Pearson Cycles 2
9 10 Sylvain Garde Addiscombe CC 2
10 5 Arjan Planting Affinity 2
11 22 Taylor Johnstone De Ver 2J
Times are approx.

[kieran]

From Londoncyclesport:

1 4 Ian Paine London Dynamo 1
2 6 Hugo Humphreys Mosquito Bikes 2J
3 14 James Waite Pearson Cycles 2
4 26 Kevin Knox Dulwich Paragon 1V
5 24 Gareth Montgomerie Sigma RT E @ 3 secs
6 1 Jake Martin OneLife J2 @ 13 secs
7 30 John Sadler TriSportNews
8 19 Luke Wallis Pearson Cycles 2
9 10 Sylvain Garde Addiscombe CC 2
10 5 Arjan Planting Affinity 2
11 22 Taylor Johnstone De Ver 2J
Times are approx.

3/4s
The high speed made any attempts to bound to fall on the rocks, despite this Rune Sanbeck Nilsson and Mike Dulmey made two great efforts. As did Ben Jacobs who created a gap back to race and was only caught a few metres short of the line when he was swamped by the race as they sprinted on mass to the line.

78 Alec Briggs Arctic RT
2 8 Teo Geoghegan Hart CC Hackney YA
3 84 Matthew Theobalds CS Gruppetto 3
4 74 Jonathan Lewis Charlotteville 3
5 54 Ben Jacobs London Dynamo 3
6 69 Nigel Ling Gemini BC 3
7 61 Stephen Bloomfield Addiscombe CC 3
8 31 Matthew Pilkington Dulwich Paragon 3
9 57 Damien Breen KIngston Whlrs 3
10 26 Paul Sewell Big Foot -

[kieran]

Well done to Sylv and Steve.

Lost of blue in the 3/4s and only 3 ACC but at least we all finished! My first race of the year and I managed to stay with the front bunch and no crashes so I am happy with that. Not so happy with my positioning, still my main weakness, the start didn't help as I cleverly positioned myself at the back of the 3/4 bunch while we lined up and waited to go. I had a bit left for the final sprint and managed to pass a few riders up the hill and was about one or two riders behind toks.

The armco barriers are going up for the motor sport racing on the bank holiday weekend. Not too much there last night but I believe much more is going up, not sure how it will effect safety but one problem is that is forces the odd jogger out onto the track in some places.

Anyway just glad to get my first race of the year done and dusted.

[Andrew G]

Were the field sizes still stupidly big last night? I thought about going but took the commuting bike instead and extended my ride home for training as I don't fancy it while there's still c200 people on a narrow 1km circuit.

[Marcus]

Great report Toks, Keiran and Sylv. Thought you had retired Toks great to read a report from a race you are in.

Maybe you guys can let everyone know when you are racing so that any local ACCers can come and support.

[Sylv]

It was very busy but felt safe for us Andrew - just the runners Kieran mentioned.

[kieran]

Andrew, it was a big field, approx 30 E12s and 80 3/4s and 20 women? But maybe people have settled in a bit as I think there were no crashes last night! A bit of dodgy riding by an ACC guy but apart from that...

[Toks]

[quote="Marcus"]Great report Toks, Keiran and Sylv. Thought you had retired Toks great to read a report from a race you are in.

[Toks]

Kieran I had no idea there was a dynamo guy off the front of our race for 10/11 laps apparently. By the way did you get an average speed for last night?

[kieran]

so I've gone back to the stone age and didn't bother timing it on my cateye computer. It took almost 52 min exactly so how many laps was it 30-5 or 30-4 ? How long is a lap again? From my exact calculations on gmap pedometer a full lap = 1.3383km and 'short' lap (where we do the red flag left turn, missing out the U bend) is 1km. We did 3 short laps so that = 3km, and then if we did 25 laps in total we have 22 full laps or if we did 26 in total we have 23 full laps, giving us:

1.3383 x 22 = 29.44 + 3 = 32.44
1.3383 x 23 = 30.781 + 3 = 33.78

a time of 52min gives a speed of:

37.4 or 39kmph depending on the number of laps. Or 23.2mph or 24.2mph in old english measures.

[Andrew G]

[quote="kieran"]Andrew, it was a big field, approx 30 E12s and 80 3/4s and 20 women? But maybe people have settled in a bit as I think there were no crashes last night! A bit of dodgy riding by an ACC guy but apart from that...

[Bridget]

[quote="Marcus"]Maybe you guys can let everyone know when you are racing so that any local ACCers can come and support.

[quote="Bridget"][quote="Marcus"]Maybe you guys can let everyone know when you are racing so that any local ACCers can come and support.

[Bridget]

[quote="Marcus"]Until they introduce a 6 or 7 cat or I lose a couple of stones I'll have to give racing a miss.