Hi everyone – time to write a blog of what I’ve been up to over the last few weeks since my last post in April (http://wp.me/p44X24-gM). It’s been a busy month filled with racing, uni coursework, revision and more! So…
First up was the Overst Road Race League 35mile road race on the evening of wednesday 3rd May at Plungar – the second round of the East Midlands Development League and having recce’d the circuit a couple of days before I knew it should be a fairly fast race. The roads were pretty open on either side and there was quite a wind blowing which was going to make it interesting with a cross headwind down the straight to the finish. It was a pretty overcast day so the race had to be shortened to 4 7 mile laps rather than 5 due to the light fading. The finish line was about 40m over the crest of a short but sharp climb up and over a canal bridge so gear selection was going to be key coming into the sprint.
I rolled around the first couple of laps in the bunch with not too much happening until a break tried to go heading onto the penultimate lap. I shot out of the bunch to try and bridge across to the break of 4/5 and got within about 10m but just ran out of legs so had to sit up and drop back into the bunch. Luckily some others were chasing on the front and the break were brought back soon enough, meaning it was heading for a bunch sprint.
Onto the final time down the straight to the finish and everyone was sitting up not wanting to take the lead, meaning we were spread right across the road and no one could move up – I was stuck about 4 rows of riders back from the front annoyingly! It stayed like this the whole way until about 200m to the bottom of the climb to the finish with a lot of us behind getting very annoyed that everyone at the front was just blocking! As we hit the climb it split up a bit and a gap opened in front of me so I went for it, starting in about 25th position! Nearing the crest of the hill and a rider dropping back on my right pulled into my line, knocking my handlebars and taking my rear derailleur into another rider’s front wheel behind. I just about managed to stay upright and sprinted over the top to take 10th place. I was hoping for a higher placing and a few more points but happy with managing to get into the top 10 having started so far back.
On the spin back to the carpark after the race I found out the hard way that the knock to my rear derailleur in the sprint had bent the hanger – when I changed gear it took the derailleur into my rear wheel snapping it clean off, twisting the derailleur, breaking the pulley cage in half and snapping a spoke… great!
Pretty annoyed about this I headed home and quickly got searching online to order some new parts – I was supposed to be racing again on Sunday and my bike was in pieces!! Luckily I managed to get it all fixed up and just about working again, although with the derailleur slightly twisted still the shifting just wasn’t as crisp as it used to be and what I’ve become used to with Di2 😦
Anyway, onto Sunday’s race – another round in the East Mids Dev. League at Thoroton – a 7 lap, 40 mile affair. It was a sunny(ish) day with a swirling wind and the course was pretty flat with some sections of horrible road surface – hopefully people would be calling out the potholes!
The race was neutralised from the HQ until we got to the finish line on the circuit and then the flag dropped and immediately a teammate from Beeston CC went for it, getting a small gap on the group which immediately strung it out. I sat mid bunch for a few laps to see what my legs were doing and to get used to the circuit and was chatting with Phil (LRC rider who I know from uni) to see how he was doing – we decided to have a go halfway round the lap with 1.5 laps to go and see if we could get away. Things were going well leading up to the corner we were going to attack out of, we were moving up when suddenly a rider cut in front of me, pushing me into the group and stopping me moving up. Round the corner and Phil attacked, quickly getting a good gap on the bunch, albeit thinking I was with him. I managed to get out of the group about mid pack and sprinted off the front to bridge over to Phil (and a group of 3 that were chasing) and I got to about 5m off the back of them and a good gap on the bunch until again my legs faded and I had to sit up, slipping back into the bunch… If only I had been with Phil when we’d planned to attack!
Anyway, the main bunch soon caught the breakaway and we were heading for another bunch sprint when with 1km to go a tractor in the road forced the commies to stop the race as we couldn’t overtake safely. Very annoying as I was moving up in about 8th wheel and was ready to empty my legs and see what they could do. We then turned round, rolled back about 500m to the second last corner on the lap and the race was re-started from there. Adding another lap would have been the best solution but unfortunately they couldn’t as marshalls had already left the corners they were posted on.
We self-neutralised the race for 100m or so to ensure everyone was clipped in and ready and then it got strung out again. I was in a similar place to before but there was a rider on my outside, meaning it was going to be more difficult to move up. Into the last corner onto the finishing straight (with about 500m to go) and the rider in front just stopped pedalling and sat up, pushing me back through the group as I had nowhere to go – very annoying! This meant I started the sprint in ~25th place, doing it the hard way! I managed to get my legs going and was overtaking all the way to the line, ending up just out of the points in 12th place. I was pretty annoyed with this, not only as I was in a good place to get a top 10 finish but also as I proved my legs were sprinting well with how I did manage to finish. However, I learnt a lot from this race and know that I need to work on holding my top end power for a little bit longer to allow me to get away/bridge gaps etc. as this is something I’m not so good at currently coming from a constant effort tt’ing background!
5 days after and I was racing again at the Lincoln Criterium 3/4, a city centre crit on a tight 1km circuit including a cobbled climb. I was pretty nervous having never raced on cobbles or in a field so big in a crit – over 70 riders were down to start. Then add into the matter heavy rain all day leading up to the race making the roads very greasy! There was a fair bit of confusion at the start as to whether we were going to get a warm up lap or not but in the end we didn’t and I ended up starting pretty much dead last – definitely not what you want on a tight circuit with limited opportunities to move up.
As soon as we were started someone in front decided it was a good idea to not move anywhere, blocking the whole of the right hand side… guess which side I was on!? After about 30s I finally managed to get over the start line and was on my way, by which time the front group was long gone. I pushed hard straight away and was catching people for the whole of the 50 minute race. I was getting time updates to the front group from Emily and it was coming down fast after being around a minute back a couple of laps in. With about 3 laps to go I had got to about 10s off the back and was in about 13th place – one final effort and I could make my way into the top 10 and get some points.
That was until on the fastest corner of the circuit with 1.5 laps to go, going about 28mph, I had to go slightly off the dry line that was forming when lapping another rider and I lost both wheels, coming down hard and sliding across the road. I stood up, got out of the way of other riders coming round and bent my shifters back straight so I could carry on riding. I got back on and got back up to speed but I couldn’t change gear – one of the connections on the Di2 must have come loose. Faffing around with this coming over the cobbles going onto the last lap I hit the leg of one of the barriers, sending me over the handlebars and onto the road once again! That meant it was race over as I couldn’t get going again and I could now feel a fair bit of pain coming from my left side.
After finding Emily and telling her I was okay, I headed over to the St. John’s Ambulance trailer to get my road rash cleaned up and bandaged – I got away pretty lightly to just have road rash and no broken bones, I must bounce well! After that we stayed around to watch the women’s and men’s elite races before heading to the local hospital to see Emily’s brother, Rob, who had unfortunately crashed on the same corner as me in his race earlier and had fractured his wrist 😦 A couple of hours later we set off back to Nottingham and finally got home way past midnight – a long and stressful day!
I definitely didn’t get much sleep at all that night so the next couple of days were spent being pretty drowsy – not ideal with lots of uni coursework to complete and revision to do. On the upside (from uni’s perspective anyway), the injuries meant that I couldn’t train so had a lot more time for work… dammit!
One major concern on the injury side of things was that I was supposed to be racing the coming Saturday at Nottingham sprint triathlon – my first open water tri of the year, the open water bit being the concern with open wounds. I spent a bit of time researching how to get the wounds to heal as fast as possible and also was very grateful to have a sister who’s a nurse, brother-in-law who’s a doctor and for lots of advice from Emily’s relatives. I managed to get some waterproof dressings from my sister so would be able to use those and some other tape etc. to keep the largest wounds safe enough from the water on Saturday. I was going to wait and decide on Friday whether to race or not, but at least I now had the tools to do so 🙂
The rest of the week consisted of just two training sessions – a short 4km run on Tuesday which was all I could manage before it got too painful, and a 1hr bike on Thursday which wasn’t too bad – I was glad to be training again so was happy to push through the pain.
Come Friday and all of the smaller wounds had healed, leaving just the deep one on the front of my knee and the large one on the front of my calf, both of which looked to be healing well. After a lot of umm’ing and aah’ing I decided to race and wrap the wounds up as well as I could – I couldn’t miss our home race at the location that Emily and I got engaged now could I??? 😀
Onto Saturday morning and it was the usual big bowl of porridge before getting our kit packed up and heading off on the long 10 minute drive to Holme Pierrepont in some lovely sunshine. Emily’s wave was at 11am and mine at 1.30pm so when we got there we registered and sorted Emily’s kit out so she could go and set up her transitions before getting into her Zone3 Vanquish wetsuit and heading down to the start.
Emily had a great race, coming out of the swim 3rd overall, even after being frozen and hardly able to move for the first 500m. She managed to bike well in the windy conditions and the rain coming down on the last 2 laps that made everything a little bit slippy! And then managed to run her fastest 5km for a long time to finish 7th overall female and 2nd F20-24 – another good result to start the season and to build on over the next races.
Then it was my turn to get ready and on checking my bike over before heading down to transition I found that my disc wheel tub had a puncture… great! Luckily I carry a spare tub and tape with me to every race so I quickly got it changed and pumped up ready to race. Having sorted out my transitions and got my Zone3 Vanquish wetsuit on I headed to the swim start and was first person into the water.
A few minutes of warming up and jostling for position on the front line the horn went and I was immediately sandwiched by the two athletes either side of me. Why they decided to swim across my line when there was plenty of space around I have no idea, but I pushed on and settled down into 4th place, with 2 people swimming off the front. Round the final turn buoy with 300m to go I pushed on into 3rd place and stayed there till I got out of the water in a time of 10.32 for the 750m – pretty pleased with that having not swum for 10 days!
I had a bit of a shocking transition as I couldn’t get my wetsuit over the massive timing chip, but I was eventually out onto the 4 lap bike course and knew this was where I was going to have to work hard. Although it had now stopped raining, the rain during Emily’s race had meant the surface was a bit greasy and having lost a bit of confidence cornering in the wet from the crash a week ago I took the corners pretty easy. I was passing people for the whole bike and made my way up into 2nd in the wave on the last lap, overtaking Joe Ricciardi who was leading the 20-24 AG up until then. I managed to put about 10s into Joe on the last half a lap so coming into T2 I knew I had some work to do on the bike to hold him off on the 5km run. My bike time was 29.22 for the 20km, a bit slower than I did at Nottingham a couple of years ago but the conditions were worse today with the wind.
Out of T2 and onto the mind-numbing 1 lap run around the lake where the end feels like its not getting any closer… I had maintained the ~10s lead on Joe through transition and told myself to just keep running and not look back. Rounding the top end of the lake with 2.5km to go I had a quick glance and saw that the gap to Joe was still the same – now just to hold onto it for the next 2.5km! Coming into the last km and I still had the gap so knew that I should be able to hold it and that I did, coming into the finish 2nd in the wave (to a flying Luke Pollard who ran 15.41…) and 1st M20-24 – result!!!
When the results were posted later I was also 4th overall, just missing out on the overall podium by 14 seconds with my overall time being 59.58. I was pretty happy with that result after a frustrating week of not being able to train and also with racing all bandaged up, but had to focus on getting recovered quickly as I was racing again the following morning!
Once back home we sorted out the mucky kit and I sat down to write an essay that was due in on Monday – nothing like last minute work! My legs were feeling pretty tired so I knew that racing in the morning was going to be tough.
I woke up and my legs were very stiff and took a bit of getting moving so I hobbled downstairs to make some porridge and get my kit ready – I was racing at the Uni of Nottingaham GP 20 mile cycling race which was due to start at 9am. Thankfully the sun was out drying the damp roads – I wasn’t going to race if it was wet as I couldn’t risk coming off again with so many tri’s lined up in the next few weeks. The course was 10 x 2mile laps with short, sharp climbs halfway round and at the end of the lap which should make things interesting for the finish.
I headed to the race, signed on and went for a warm up around the course. It was pretty much all dry except for two tight 90 degree corners which were renowned for crashes over the last few years. I knew I was going to need to take these easy as my confidence was still a bit down after Lincoln. Soon we lined up and had the race briefing before being set off neutralised behind the commies car for the first km. As soon as the flag dropped it kicked off and I was soon at the back, my legs just didn’t want to wake up. After 1.5 laps I was about 20m off the back of the group and had to put a big effort in to get back on. After this my legs showed some signs of life and I managed to stick in the group and recover a bit.
A few laps later an attack with 3 riders went and I tried to bridge over to them – by the time I’d got to them the bunch had picked up the pace and caught us all a few moments later. I then decided to just sit in the group for the next few laps and that I’d have to go for it in the sprint. Onto the last lap and I moved into about 6th wheel and then coming up the hill with half a lap to go I found myself rolling into the race lead so I just went for it down the hill and got a small 5m gap. I knew I had to go for it as if I eased up I’d just be swallowed by the group and end up out of position for the sprint, so emptied the tank going up the final climb. I crested the hill in first but ended up leading everyone out for the sprint to the line which was about 300m after the crest.
Two riders came round me but I carried on pushing hard and just got pipped on the line for 3rd place by about 10cm, finishing 4th. I was annoyed to miss out on the podium as I felt I should have been on it, but I’ve got to be pleased to even finish the race after nearly pulling out after a couple of laps. I’m also pretty pleased to have finally got enough points to get my 3rd cat 😀
After the race Emily and I headed home and went out for a short spin in the sun before coming back home to do some uni work – I still needed to finish off two bits of coursework that were in in 16 hours time!
Overall I’ve had a pretty good month, despite the crash at Lincoln and uni work having to take over our lives a little bit – it’ll soon be over and we can focus on training over summer 🙂 I’ve accomplished one of my season goals to get my 3rd cat BC license, have raced pretty well at Nottingham Sprint and am also learning a lot in all of the cycling races that I’m doing. Over the next month or so I’ve got a pretty packed schedule, with uni exams included! See below for my plans:
May 24th – Overst League Plungar 35 mile cycling race
May 27th – British Sprint Triathlon Championships, Strathclyde
June 1st – Mallory 3rd Cat Cycling Race
June 4th – Deva Standard Distance Triathlon – ITU Qualifier
June 6th – Harvey Hadden Circuit Race League (Cycling) – 1st Round
June 10th – National Aquathlon Championships, Leeds
June 17th – Harvey Hadden Circuit Race League – 2nd Round
June 18th – Woodhall Spa Sprint Triathlon
June 24th – Cholmondeley Castle Sprint Plus Triathlon (800m OW, 44km, 8km)
June 27th – Harvey Hadden Circuit Race League – 4th Round
Finally, to end this massively long blog, I’d like to thank everyone who supports me in my racing and training – I wouldn’t be able to do it without the kind support from my sponsors and also from Emily and everyone else supporting me at races – I appreciate all the shouts of encouragement 😀
Into summer (June 6th and beyond after final uni exam!) and I hope to have more regular race reports on here to avoid massive long blogs like this one, so keep an eye out for those.
Until then – happy training 😀
Angus Smith - Triathlete 
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