Tag Archives: pickering brook

Pickering Brook road race #2 – race report

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So there are only 46 days to go until the last race of the Pickering Brook series for this season.

Craig put his experience of his first race 2 weeks ago together below, so if you like what you are reading and want to experience it yourself mark the 25th of August in your calendars for the next event.  SPR should be there with a fairly big crowd and we are planning to take the tent out to the hills too…  So get your training in, your kilometers up, and sign up for your (first) race

 Pickering Brook Rnd#2 C Grade Race Report – First Time Racer Craig Denham

I finally committed to signing up for a proper cycling race after first starting group cycling some 13 years ago as a 16 year old. Having spoken to Pete about this for about 2 years, it seemed like the timing and race format for the Pickering Brook series would be ideal. So I signed up for C grade, ramped up my training a bit, bought a trainer and did some interval sessions, even traded in my grizzly bear look I’ve agonised over for some time. I was ready, but for what?…..

Come race day I must admit I was quite nervous – I’ve always rated myself as a reasonable cyclist but how would I stack up in a race? To make matters worse my folks decided they wanted to watch – great, what if I come last?  Race format for Pickering Brook consists of a 1 lap time trial (7.5km) followed by the road race (5 laps for C grade). Started the time trial fully pumped up to push as hard as I can for the full lap – dear god it was painful. I’m no expert on doing time trials and I now get the impression it’s important to warm up properly and then not go too hard at the start – I did neither. Mr Bonner and the long hills group passed me going in the opposite direction which provided a nice bit of encouragement, but the lap felt horrible and I set a time of 12:32 – good enough for 11th. Not a bad result. Must admit, it was impressive to watch the likes of J Bolton absolutely smashing it on the home straight, respect.

So onto the road race. Decided to start off towards the rear of the bunch and then if I felt good, work my way forward. Laps 1+2 passed, the legs felt good so I decided to try to move forward from lap 3. Found myself on the front of the group for a fair bit of the last couple laps. I was really keen to hold a position near the front for the last lap as Amanda suggested it was important given the hotdog turn leading up to the final sprint. On the final lap, I held second wheel coming down the main straight leading into an uphill section prior to the hotdog and the guy in front decided to sit up – great, I was faced with leading the group a long, long way out from the sprint – race over. Then Alistair rides past and tells me to grab his wheel – my saviour! Alistair gives me a great tow up the hill towards the hotdog and really stretches out the group. He then pulls off so I’m on my own for the run down the hill then onto the up-hill sprint. This highlighted my complete lack of race craft; leading out the group with about 1km to go, I knew I was going to get swamped at the sprint, should I go flat out downhill and try to hold on to the finish, or go easier downhill and try for the sprint? I went easier downhill, then as the sprint started uphill got passed by what felt like the entire bunch, but I managed to claw back a few places and crossed the line in 5th place.

Conclusions: not going to lie, the ITT was hard work and I personally didn’t get much enjoyment out of it. The race however was great fun; I really enjoyed the tactics and will be signing up for Round 3. I’m really keen to nominate for domestique/lead-out duties for the next round. Alistair – I think you’d do a great job as nominated sprinter. I think if the SPR C graders work together we can come away with a win.

For those members of the club who haven’t tried racing, I strongly recommend you have a go. It’s great fun and really adds another dimension onto your cycling.

Thanks very much to Pete & Amanda for your advice and encouragement – much appreciated.

Ride Safe,

Craig

 

sunday 19th october – cyclo-sportif pickering brook

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race report by peter.

 

cyclo-sportif race at pickering brook.

  • over 500 riders entered for the last event of the season.  this is an increase of 100 over last years event.  it is a surprise really since this one is so close to home, i thought that a lot more would be coming out to play.  there were more riders at the swan valley event, so i am guessing that this one suffers because the course is described as hilly.
  • the wind… what happened to the hot day, it was pretty cool when we started but didn’t take long to warm up.  it wasn’t like we needed armwarmers and vest.  and really i am just complaining because i didn’t take a jumper with me to the start.
  • three laps of a 25km circuit on roads that we often use for the sunday hills ride.  especially the stretch between karagullen servo and pickering brook.  any ride we do down towards armadale or the kahuna, will always follow that road to get to the coffee shop.  i would not be able to count the number of times we have ridden along it.  the little circuit around repatriation road had been added to our rides a couple of times recently mainly because we had this event coming up.
    first corner, not tired just yet.
    first corner, not tired just yet.

  • team of 8 – ryan, brendan, mike, michael, stu, jerry, bruce, peter.  there is a maximum team size of 9 and a minimum of 5.  it is rare for us to field a full team and even harder to get a good set of evenly matched riders.
  • teams off at 30 sec intervals meant that there would always be groups in front of us to chase down.  it also meant that there would always be groups that we would have to pass which can be tricky.
  • michael gets a flat before we leave the car-park (for a change).  he has a habit of flatting during these events, so hopefully this meant that we got that out of the way early.
  • lorraine also turned up to support the spr boys with evil brownies.  i had one and it was probably the reason why i didn’t run out of energy during the race. 
  • we started before the spr2 team (so we had no-one important to chase).  the start order of the teams is usually reverse ability with the faster teams starting later.  as we had not really raced these events before, the organisers did not know where to start us and put the second team starting 6 minutes behind us.
  • from about the halfway mark of the first lap, bruce was really struggling.  he was finding it hard to keep the pace and couldn’t catch his breath.  there was a burnt out area on the course and we suspect that he developed a bout of asthma from breathing in the smoke and other crap in the area.  we changed tact and had six of us rolling through in two lines while bruce sat a the back with ryan pushing him to keep the pace up.  at the end of the first lap, he peeled off and went to the medical tent with lorraine.
  • we kept the pace up for lap two and made good time passing other teams.  it was getting more congested now as the 2 lap and 1 lap teams were on the course.  this meant that some of the groups we were passing were alos getting passed by other groups.  made things tight with riders coming the other way and general traffic on the road as well.  on a couple of occasions we had to pass some cars that were unable to get around a group of slow riders.
  • start of lap 3, brendan realises his rear tyre is going soft.  we are passing by the pickering brook school and he starts bouncing it to check the pressure.  from behind, it is clear that it is going soft… fast.  we go as far as we can, but he pulls over and i was expecting that he would change it.  instead, ryan pulls out a gas bottle and they just pump it to get it hard again.  we are off with minimum delay.
  • get to the turn around at karagullen and head back up the hill with brendan’s tyre slowly going down.  we pull over again and ryan adds more gas.  i was unsure whether they had enough so i grab my saddle bag, but the whole mount and everything comes off the bike. i then had to shove it all back in my pocket, wasting time as the rest of the group heads off.  ryan waits for me and drafts me back to the pack.
    end of first lap, getting tired now.
    end of first lap, getting tired now.

  • we head up the last climb before the finish and onto the nice smooth hotmix.  brendan says that he can feel the valve every time the wheel rotates so it is pretty flat.  ryan and he stop to gas again, while the rest of us just slow time it up the hill.  some of the groups we have past are now passing us.  once ryan and brendan catch back up, we all go hard to get to the finish.  team u and i get caught up amongst us and we all finish in one big group.

  • finish in around 1:57 according to brendan’s speedo but we will wait for the official confirmation.  each team captain was wearing a transponder which they will work the times out with.
  • as we regroup after at my car, lorraine pulls out the esky and provides everyone with a nice cold coke and brownies.  we will be working on getting a spr sun shade to congregate around for next years races.
  • rob wins the leadership jersey for his work in keeping the spr2 team together and setting ground rules as to what constitutes a push and what is just touching another man’s bum.
  • all up a good hit out especially for spr2 as they had not raced this format before. 
  • don’t actually know if this is an easier way to write the blog.  seems to take just as long.