Hard Lessons as a Roadie - The Hub Cycle Tour

Friday afternoon I set off from work to Hawkes Bay to do The Hub Cycle Tour. This is a three day road race with four stages. I had been debating whether to enter A Grade or B Grade and eventually decided to enter A grade just because the B grade distances were a bit short for me. I hadn't really taken into consideration that riders required a race license to enter, and that there was some quite substantial prize money up for grabs, which invariably was going to make the field quite strong.

Our first stage (prologue) was on Friday evening and was a 6km time trial (flat as a pancake)... How hard could it be??? I arrived at Ngatarawa Winery and my first task was to change over my tyres. I had noticed in the morning that there was a bulge on my rear tyre and quite a few nasty nicks and after ringing around every shop in Palmerston North and Hawkes Bay to try and get my hands on my favourite tyres with no success, I settled on something pretty close to that I picked up at Pedal Pushers. I was pretty nervous about racing on a tyre I didn't know, but I figured it was the better option that suffering a blowout on the road. It was lucky that I did change the tyres over because when I went to pump my rear wheel back up, the tube blew out. The wind was blowing a gale, but fortunately, there was no rain, as was the case when I left Palmerston North. I set off at my allocated time, and straight out of the gates, my cleat disengaged and I smacked my knee on the bars. Argh! What a muppet!!! This also drew attention to the fact that I was riding a road bike with SPD cleats (yes, everyone, I'm a mountain biker, OK???). I clipped back in and enjoyed the tail wind on the way out, averaging about 45km/hr, then turned around for the trip back to be smacked in the face with a terrible headwind. At the halfway mark, the girl who had started 30secs back caught me, and passed me like I was standing still, but at the end of the time trial, the time that other girls were crossing the finish line indicated that maybe I wasn't too far off the pace. We'd see when the results were posted.

I then headed in to Napier to check in to my accommodation and had one of those terrible moments where you think "this looked much better on the website than it does right now in real life". I thought that accommodation in Napier for $65 a night was too good to be true... To be fair, the room was clean and tidy and the food was bloody fantastic (they even cooked me up a special pasta as requested). The following evening, I was treated to the smell of weed emanating from one of my neighbour's rooms... I promptly reported it to management and the smell was gone by the time I got back! (I felt like I was at school again dobbing on the naughty kids!)

You've all heard me say many times before that I'm not a very good roadie... I like my space and I'm not good at nearly touching the wheel of the person in front of me, or nearly touching their elbow while they are next to me. I'm a terrible pack rider! We had two stages on Saturday, a 66km race in the morning and a criterium in the afternoon. The morning race set off at a reasonably quick pace and we had very little time to get organised before we hit the first climb of the day. My training for climbing has been really good lately (I set another personal best on Wednesday, then vomited on the side of the road!!!), but it wasn't good enough to hold the back of the Elite ladies up the climb. I got stuck behind a girl that dropped off and by the time I realised, I was unable to bridge the gap... It was highly frustrating, especially seeing as my plan had been to force myself to push hard to keep up with them just from a training perspective. If it was any consolation, I wasn't the only one that was dropped and I picked up a girl named Katie and we took turns at the front working together. The bunch was long gone, but I was still keen to get some good training down for the day. As we approached the top of the KOM climb, I pulled alongside Katie and said "did you want to sprint for the climb, just for fun?"... She looked at me like there was something wrong with me, but reluctantly agreed, and we raced each other over the crest of the hill, then collapsed back onto our saddles to settle in for another 58km in the wind. Just at the start of the second lap, we picked up another rider and we all worked together, taking turns in the wind... I started to get a bit frustrated because it seemed like they were just cruising along (no doubt trying to conserve their energy for the crit that afternoon), but I was keen to give it some stick and get some training out of it, so I found myself spending a fairly large amount of time at the front. I remember hearing one of the girls say "it doesn't matter anyway... We're coming last"...I had a bit of a giggle, but then looked across to see she was dead serious. That comment kinda stuck with me and bugged me for the rest of the ride. I suppose I come from a discipline where so much can change throughout the race that the thought would never enter my head. I was thinking "Do you really give up that easily?" At the end, I decided to do a mad sprint for the finish line (just for fun)... To be honest, I don't think either of the two girls contested it, but I enjoyed topping off my training session with a bit of a smashout... Not to mention it was Elite ladies and I didn't come last!

Finding the venue for the crit was a nightmare (signage would have been most welcome!)... This was only the third criterium I had ever done, so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. The venue was around the grounds of one of the local coolstores, which was perfect, as it meant no road closures. It was actually really exciting to watch... There was loud music, people cheering, riders going really, REALLY fast and people washing out and crashing at high speed. All I knew about the criterium as I stood on the line was that I had to ride my guts out for 30mins plus 3 laps and try not to get lapped out by the leaders. They did a quick role call. Being the clown I am, instead of answering a straight "yes" to my name, I called out "PRESENT!". I clearly had no idea what I was about to get myself into. I was actually hoping that the pack would hold down a civil pace to start with and then wind it up... No chance... Straight from the line they went hell for leather and I only just got my feet clipped in by the first corner. I rode my guts out, and in hindsight, maybe pushed a gear that was slightly too hard, and got lapped out within the first 10mins. They don't let lapped riders remain on the course because it's dangerous, so I pulled off the course, feeling a bit bummed out. Like I said before, I found the whole idea of the crit really exciting, and I was actually just disappointed that I couldn't still be out there and be part of the atmosphere. Before my next criterium, I would likely work on figuring out my ideal gear ratio and cadence for maximum speed and minimal fatigue and would work on my cornering technique... I think these two things were a huge factor in not being able to hang onto the pack. Man, these girls were quick! After the crit, I bumped into Bridget Lodge, a well respected mountain biker (turned roadie since an injury last year). I'd had a quick chat with Bridget earlier in the day, but it was really cool to speak to her and if I recall correctly, she introduced me to someone as a "legend mountain biker", which I felt quite honored by, coming from her!

I left the crit actually feeling a bit down. I felt really bummed I couldn't keep up with the grade I had entered, and in hindsight, I think B grade would have been a better call. I reckon I had the legs for A grade but I just hadn't done enough road racing to understand the tactics and bunch dynamics very well, especially at an elite level. For the last few weeks, I had been smashing my training and my hill climbs were getting better and better and it was so demoralising to think that it still wasn't good enough... It was a real wake up call that I still have a long way to go with my training over the next couple of months (and maybe a fairly timely wake-up call to stop me getting complacent). I headed back into town, freshened up and then went and treated myself to a nice dinner along the waterfront, then headed up to Te Mata Peak to sit and read my book and chill while I watched the sunset (which was spectacular, by the way!). I slept pretty solidly that night and woke up the next morning feeling quite a bit more positive.

Sunday we had one final stage, which was a 93km road race. I felt pretty determined to stick in the bunch as best I could today, especially seeing as there was still quite a bit of wind around. The first 10km, I did quite well... I was working hard, but rotating through with the bunch with a degree of competence. As we hit the first hill, I was sitting middle of the pack and I pushed hard up the hill to find myself still sitting in the pack at the top of the climb, which was more a relief than anything else. I thought to myself "if I can position myself mid-pack before each climb, I should be able to stick to them over the hills". What I hadn't prepared myself for was that the next hill was pretty much straight away and was the KOM prime, so I hadn't repositioned myself back into a suitable place in the pack. I worked hard up the hill, but as quick as I was off the back, the rest of the pack were over the other side of the hill. I was so bloody angry with myself... And even angrier that I knew how to climb a hill like that properly, but I ended up stuck in a gear way to high for what I was trying to achieve... Real amateur stuff. A couple of other girls got dropped with me... One of them was Katie, who I had ridden with the day before... To her credit, there was no cruising this time. We teamed up and gave chase as hard as we could (and we did work bloody hard). The thing that made it such a tease was that the road was flat and we could see the pack ahead of us for ages, so we kept chasing and chasing until the pack was out of sight and then we kept working hard at it... We still had another 80km to ride, which to me was no real big deal, but I wanted to work hard, finish and maybe post a respectable time given said circumstances. I felt bad that I knew I wasn't really much to draft off for her, so I was trying to do extra long turns at the front to hopefully give her some rest. We worked really well together, but then on the final lap, my partner in crime started to drop off on the climbs. I have to say, I wasn't sure of the etiquette on things like this... If you have been working with someone to chase and they drop off the back of you, do you wait for them, or is it on their own back to keep up with you? I waited on a couple of the climbs, but then on one climb, I looked back and she was way off the pace. I dropped the pace a bit and kept moving, but she never caught back up. I felt even worse when I saw her Dad's car go past ten minutes later with her bike on the back... She had pulled out. As I rounded the corner back onto the main highway with about 20km to go, I reeled in another one of the girls that had being dropped from the pack. We worked together and rotated through for a while, but when I looked back to move over and let her roll through I noticed she wasn't there. She had dropped off the back of me, too... I was on my own again... Five minutes later, I also saw a car go past with her bike on the back. I have to say, I was a little bewildered at why you would ride a three day tour, make it all the way to within 10km of the finish line and then pull out and DNF. I didn't have a sad wagon waiting for me... It hadn't even crossed my mind, to be honest. I just kept trucking away towards the finish line... I was actually a little concerned that I may get there and they had packed up and gone home.... To my relief, this was not the case. The stage did have a hilltop finish, though, and by the time I got there, I was pretty trashed and very grateful that the organisers were able to give me a lift back to the start line (as opposed to having to ride the 20km back)... I'd worked really hard today and felt much better about the whole thing than yesterday.

Although I was the lowest-placed finisher, there were quite a large number of girls that pulled out over the weekend (maybe as much as a third of the field), which lifted my ranking quite significantly... There's a lot to be said for a bit of tenacity. Let's face it, you've been riding enough that you are going to hurt whether you pull out of the race or not, so it just makes sense to finish the job, doesn't it??? This next week, I have another hard week of training and I get to pick up my new Yeti ASR5 Carbon on Monday... There's always something to look forward to!