Even though I’ve been here five times before, it still feels like entering the great unknown. How will I be feeling? Has the training paid off? How fast am I this year? How fast is everybody else?
Yes, it’s the first race of the season.
It always amazes me how quickly the new season comes round. In October, when I’m tired from the previous season, I’m quite happy for it to be ages until I race again – time to recuperate, not think about training, not compete. Then there’s a stage of all that enthusiasm coming rushing back as I recover mentally from a full race season, and a feeling of there being ages to get fit for the next season, with plenty of months ahead for the best winter’s training yet.
Soon enough though, it’s March and the season is upon us, with those mixed feelings of excitement, nerves and uncertainty. And you can feel it in the air at races – UK races seem all to be oversubscribed in March and April, in perverse contrast to later in the year when the weather is better; and the atmosphere in early races reflects that pent-up competitive spirit which has been brewing all winter long – lots of twitchiness, with people raring to go but not having been in a big bunch much, if at all, for a number of months.
Season debut for me this year was the Wally Gimber Memorial, a “spring classic” for South-East England, run by local club Dulwich Paragon. 140k of rolling roads around Kent. Ideally I would have done some other racing before this, because it was a bit of a baptism of fire. But what with a week in Tenerife and wanting to keep spending time on the mountain bike before the ABSA Cape Epic, somehow that hadn’t happened.
So not only did the first big race of the season carry with it all the usual uncertainties and unknowns, but I didn’t know how my top-end speed would be (other than that it wouldn’t be great), and the field was one of the better ones I’ve faced in a road race – a Paris-Roubaix winner, a couple of Spanish pros, a full team from the GB Olympic track development squad, some of them off to the world champs this week.
Happily, the weather was great – sunny and spring-like – and our team all stayed upright, unlike the joker who threw himself over his handlebars going uphill at one point. Our top rider was 14th – a strong performance in that field – and I was in the 30s, having got involved in a decent second chase group.
Overall, a decent day’s racing and a performance that I’m relatively content with, even if it didn’t set the world on fire. And I remained intact, and now ready for the Epic! Only days to go now…