sunday 14th sept - cyclo-sportif, york (spr team 01)

race report by peter.

as far as racing in perth goes, nothing can come close to the popularity of the cyclo-sportif events. however, as the organisors will tell you, it is not racing but a participation event. as such, the different format today gave others an opportunity to see how a real road race is run. instead of the normal team time trial format, this event would be a grand fondo mass start event. well mass enough to head off in groups of around 40 – 50 riders with 2 min between each group. as such the “no drafting between groups” rule was not in effect likewise the “stick together as a team rule”. this meant that we could form big groups and work together as well as drop team mates and not have to slow the whole group down to allow them back on. not that we were going to do it deliberately, but there would be other groups that would dictate the pace.

so, getting ahead of myself a bit again.

the event was to be held at york which, from previous experience, meant open roads with lots of crosswinds. it was not forecast to disappoint. the course would take us north to spencers brook before turning west towards toodyay, but not quite hitting the toodyay shire border. there is a bit of a dispute with the toodyay shire after they stuffed around the cyclo organisation earlier on in the year. it seems that 600 cyclists with supporters is an inconvenience to a town. the toodyay event this year was moved to lancelin. because of this, the advertised 108km event would be shortened to just under 100km.

so, as this event was not being run like a team time trial, we opened it up to anyone that we normally ride with as opposed to the normal race team. we were also keen to get a few riders into the 70km event so that they get a taste of racing rather than just coffee rides. at the end of the day we had a team of nine in the 100km event and a team of six in the 70km event. lorraine’s version of events for the 70km race have already been posted below, but well done to those guys and girls as for all of them it was the first event of this type they had been in.

in the 100km event along with myself, were, mark , mike, dr jerry, michael, dr mark, doug, ben and carlo. it was the latter four’s first time at a cyclo event and it would be interesting to see how they held up.

as we were a new team and had previously been riding under the rio tinto jersey, the organisors did not know our form and as such put us in the last group to go. i did a bit of negotiating and managed to get us into the third group alongside the current rio tinto riders. it would be interesting to see how this event would play out with such a wide range of skills present in each group.

we headed to the line and i noticed how tight my quads were. i had spent the entire previous day building a play-bench for ben and was now paying for the constant squatting and drilling and cutting wood. it was not a good sign for the start of a race but i was hoping that they would get better as the day wore on. pretty soon we were off.

our group was quite big and probably contained about 50 riders. with no real organisation the group was all over the place from the gun. mike suggested that we do single turns at the front and peel off, but i was keen to see how the rest of the group would actually work before i committed our team to dragging everyone around.

so, what happened instead was riders would go hard at the front and start to smash the group apart. we were guilty of that also and slowly but surely we dropped riders from our group and picked up others that started two minute in front of us. after about 10 kms i decided that i we needed a bit of control. we had already lost doug, dr mark and ben to an earlier surge up a undulation and they got caught in the back of the group. we had lost all the rio team except jens who had stuck with us on the surges. the majority of the group was made up of our spr team and a team from southern river bikeforce.

as i said i eventually got sick and tired of the chaos and rolled to the front and started yelling at people. we got a roll through happening. mike was concerned that we were chasing down carlo and jens who were currently up the road. i said that it was way too early and they would not stay away from here, so we will pull them back and just maintain control for now. some of the other teams were concerned that we would roll through too hard, but i reassured them that we would just do this to keep out of the wind.

it was all going fine, although some people needed a reminder every so often when they would not hold a wheel properly and let gaps appear. also, whenever something out of the ordinary (i.e. railway crossing or corner) appeared, the group would lose it impetus and have to be reminded to roll through again.

after the left hander at spencers brook, we came across a railway crossing that was at an angle. the rider next to me swerved to avoid the guy in front who had turned to get his wheel perpendicular to the tracks. the guy next to me had his front wheel slip out as the track was damp from the light mist that had been present all morning. he came down with a thump and jens narrowly avoided riding straight into him. we looked back briefly, but kept going.

we were now riding almost straight into a headwind and along the way we dropped a whole bunch more riders. pretty soon it was the southern river guys and us along with maybe a handful of different individuals that had lost their teams.

about halfway along this stretch, mike took off. not a deliberate attack, but i think he broke away on a small hill and just kept going. carlo soon bridged across to him and the two stayed out front for a while. now whenever a southern river (or ss riders as that was their race number) tried to move off the front, mark would just swing off with them causing the group to snake along the road. when asked why he wasn’t doing a turn, mark replied that he had teammates up the road so he wasn’t going to chase them down.

this continued for a while and i thought that it was a good opportunity to exploit it and try to bridge across to mike and carlo. i was on the back so sprinted to get around the group and managed to gap them as they were still stuffing around. i got about halfway across the gap and looked back to see jerry on the front of the pack, chasing me down. i sat up as i didn’t want mike and carlo to be caught. i asked jerry what he was doing and he asked me why i was chasing down my teammates. i said that i wasn’t as i had a gap and was trying to bridge across but he was the one that was dragging the rest of the pack along. we drifted to the back and had a talk about tactics. it was decided to just leave mike and carlo out there and see how they did.

from then on it was up to the ss boys to do the work, so we left well alone. they did an admirable job and mark commented how they didn’t once complain that we had stopped working. as we approached the turn around, the other two groups in front of us came blasting back along the road. that tailwind looked good and i couldn’t wait to taste it.

just before the turn we got to see how far ahead mike and carlo were, and the gap did not seem too great. at a right hand corner, one of the ss boys went left for some unknown reason, so the rest sat up to wait for him. i tried to take advantage by attacking to see if i could get across to mike. mark also made an effort, but when i looked back, they had started to get organised and where chasing. i sat up again and found my place at the back of the pack.

the tailwind turned out to be not quite a tailwind. as the road turned the wind came from every direction but mostly was blowing across the road. our group was strung out trying to get a draft and the ss boys were doing a good job of forcing us into the wind or risk riding on the other side of the road. i think we lost a couple more riders along this stretch and it was not surprising. if you didn’t get in the prime draft position, it was a hard ride.

after the turn at spencers brook, michael dropped to the back and was bouncing his back wheel in the tried and true method of checking whether it was flat. i had a look and it was pretty soft from what i could see. i bid him farewell and he stopped to change it… three times.

the remainder of the race was pretty much the same. the wind was now coming across from the right and was quite strong. the group echeloned across the road, but that really only gave protection to the first 4 or 5 riders before the rest of us had to line out behind. this meant that we were exposed to the wind for the rest of the ride.

mark had got around that problem by joining the ss boys in doing some turns at the front. he wasn’t chasing but gave a hand to set the pace and i allowed him to stay out of the wind.

i had no computer as i was still on chris’ bike so i didn’t know how far to go. it was probably the last 15 min or so that my legs began to cramp up on a small rise and i fell off the back. i was in damage control mode for the rest of the ride and just did what i could to get to the end. luckily i was picked up by a couple of total triathlon guys for the run into town and they gave me a nice draft home.

so, as is the format of cyclo-sportif, we all headed to the town hall for lunch. with over 600 riders, the logistics of getting everyone fed is quite a job, but they manage to pull it off at each event and I have never known anyone to go hungry. a few awards jerseys are given out for the bravest, strongest and stupidest riders as well as a bunch of raffle prizes.

so at the end of the day, the results were based on the combined time for the first four riders. I had missed the briefing as I was chasing down carlo to give him his race number and didn’t hear that bit of info. luckily for us mark and jerry stayed with the group and with mike and carlo up the road, my time didn’t matter. however, as we were actually competing against all the teams, not just the ones in our group, we probably should have just all worked together and may have got a better overall time. we will know for next time.