Month: September 2015

This Sunday saw the very welcome return of the SCMA Arthurs Seat hill climb on a glorious sunny day. As ever, my preparation was dismal – doing a 56 mile loop to Peebles the day before plus a wedding/ceilidh at night. But I’ve been ‘practising’ lots during the year and had high hopes of bettering the 4m37s I managed last year.

To cut a short story short, my one-and-only run this year was 4m6s, a whole 31 seconds faster than last year – which put me in 10th place out of about 40-something “men on road(ish) bikes”.

That’s a little bit shy of my best ever strava time of 3m53s. However that strava time was a) a flying 20+mph start, vs standing start yesterday, b) done with a helpful easterly breeze, and c) a slightly shorter distance (the strava segment ends at the corner, vs halfway along the lay-by for the SCMA event). So, in reality, I think my run was pretty much at the limit.

It’s a great event. Everyone is friendly + chatty and there’s the full range from omg quick riders to people doing runs with panniers+bikelocks attached. And three unicyclists! I’ll have to do a run on my unicycle next year. And a wheeled skier, who was stunningly fast. I started my run thirty seconds after he set off, so I passed him on the way up and saw him at the finish line. He was flying up the hill at an incredible pace (faster than several people on bicycles I think).

My legs are still recovering, but I’m very happy to have done my second SCMA hill climb (and got a tshirt this time)! Roll on next year! (Not convinced I can knock another 31 seconds off my time though)

A hot, sunny cyclocross race? Surely not. But that’s what we got today at the inaugural Beveridge Park Grand Prix of Cyclocross in Kirkcaldy today. And a top half finish (57th out of 117 starters), which is my target for this year.

It was a fast, swoopy dry course (a bit like Callander Park 2014) with only a few spots to ‘watch out’ for. The turn off the tarmac clib onto the grass was fiddly – I saw someone come a cropper there early on, and it was a tight line around the trees each time. The barrier-after-a-downhill-turn was hard – I never quite nailed that, but did often pass people on the remount.

But the highlight of the course every lap was the fast wide 180 degree downhill-to-uphill corner halfway around – which I hereby name “Curva Parabolica”. Most people treated it as a corner followed by a climb. But I found I could take the ‘karting line’ right around the outside without braking at all. Once you’re hooked up on that line, you’re committed. It’s like a high-speed rollercoaster ride. But noone else was taking that line, so I always had a clear un-blocked run and it meant I shot out of the corner with grande vitesse and carried the momentum up the hill, passing people every lap. I looked forward to it every lap!

Following tradition, my pre-race training was a disaster. Two weeks on holiday without a ride, followed by two weeks with a cold-like bug. I managed one long ride up to Redstone Rigg two weeks ago, and a handful of laps around Arthurs Seat. But my race pacing was fine – went fast on the first couple of laps then settled down. My lap times were unusually consistent.

That is, except for one lap. I had just passed a barrier but just as I started my remount, my front wheel got crossed up and I tumbled to the ground in a terrible bike/rider tangle. Somehow the chainring impaled my upper thigh, a rather improbable injury. When I got up, the chain was wedged in the front ring, and took a while to unpick. The handlebars and front wheel weren’t pointing the same way, so I had to force them back in alignment. And my brake levers were bent around, but still working. After checking that the wheels and brakes were working, I got on with my race. Having experienced what it feels like to DNF last year, it was going to take more than that to stop me. Looking at the lap chart, I lost a minute here – perhaps three places.

It was a good “racing” race for me too. There was three other riders who I kept seeing again and again. Sometimes I was faster, sometimes they were faster. But it all seemed to average out across the lap, and so we kept passing and repassing for most of the race

So, hopefully onwards and upwards with a month until the first round of the series at Callander Park.