Hey look, Paul W towing some guys up a hill! This only happened on lap 1

The annual Hull Thursday road race is always a source of fear and dread for anyone who isn’t a natural climber, on account of its six ascents of the sharp 115- metre climb out of North Newbald. It didn’t start well from my perspective, with a puncture on the way to the start, from which I was rescued by a good samaritan from Holme Valley Wheelers who gave me a lift to the village hall where track pumps awaited. Chapeau, therefore, to Holme Valley Wheelers, the home of decent folk who stop for you. And to Gary K for the track pump.

It turned out that flats were a big feature of the race, on account of the East Yorks’s usual deadly rain/flint combo, which saw many racers plodding disconsolately back to their cars along the dodgy back straight. (If they were proper hardmen they would have followed the example of Pete Fielding-Smith a couple of years ago and run to the finish in their socks). In fact I can probably ascribe a top-20 finish to the large number of riders who were punctured out of the race (and to the DNFs who fancied an early lunch).

Anyway as to the racing itself it was the usual Newbald circuit cycle – a brisk start, lots of chatting along the back straights then plenty of manoeuvring as weedier riders like me try to get to the front before the climb so they can slide back thru the bunch but still be with the group by the time the worst of the gradient is over. This worked first time out, in a hard ascent that shelled out a few riders. However on the next lap I got gapped shortly after Paul Rymer came breezing past like he was riding to the shops. Fortunately a grupetto of four riders formed and we kept the bunch tantalisingly in sight for a couple of laps, without actually getting closer. Then it was three of us, and by the penultimate lap we learned we were 21st-23rd…

When the BikePure rider in our group saw another shelled-out guy in front, he cranked up the pace to get a top 20 finish, dropping me and a Hull Thursday, so we 2-upped round the rest of the bell lap before I said goodbye on the final climb. By this time the rising number of DNFs had us 18th and 19th and that’s how it ended, probably 3 mins or so off the bunch. Very nice to be greeted by a VC Beverley crowd fresh from the club run, thanks lads!

I’ve no idea how things played out up front but big congrats to Paul R who got a superb 3rd (extra-impressive given he’s ill) with Sheffrec dominating the top positions. Droppy took 15th after sticking with the lead group for 5 out of six laps and Gary K came in shortly after me.

Goes without saying that it chucked it down properly at one point so we all looked properly Belgian at the end.

Many more points are likely in 2012 and beyond from this very talented young rider, who most recently got an extremely respectable 8th in the Active/CP Cycles RR.

For career masochists like our own Dutchy, who will soon be facing the likes of Wiggo and Dr Hutch again this year on account of his talent and appetite for solo suffering, this is all good. But for regular folk who don’t, as Ben lyrically suggested in the forum, “live in caves (or Market Weighton) and eat baby crows”, the TT world can be a bit offputting. (Especially if you try and navigate the profoundly cryptic CTT website, but that’s a whole ‘nother rant).

Which is why 2-ups are good. You at least get to share the pain – and the kudos/blame, depending on the outcome – with someone else. And the ride itself arguably becomes more interesting – a test of teamwork and formation riding skill as well. No doubt there are severe high priests of time-trialling who think TTTs are for girlymen and that the only ‘race of truth’ is one person against the clock. Judging by most of the faces who had done the 24-mile hardriders course on Sat 17th, though, it seemed most had been putting in a pretty hard effort.

Ben and I set off with a reasonably well organised plan – 1) smooth changes with no hammering through so the person just returning from duty on the front has to sprint like a madman to get back on; 2) Ben on the front more when the road dipped downhill, on account of his being more slippery with the Zipp 404s he’d blagged for the day; 3)1-minutes turns or thereabouts 4) general full-effort, raaargh!, committed kind of behaviour.

We came close to a morale dip when one of the Team Swift pairs passed us even before we’d got to Hutton Cranswick, effortlessly whooshing by on full low-profile machines with full disc rear wheels and all the usual slippery TT gadgetry. That moment was almost immortalised by Rich Cutsforth’s short film here:

The road to Driff was smooth as always and then, as we knew, things got tougher as we swung into the wind and the bumpy roads in the Bainton direction. An unsettling mechanical sound as Ben hit a small hole I hadn’t pointed in time could have had interesting consequences: turned out back at HQ it had loosened his front spindle. Good job we didn’t pull any wheelies.

By this point I was briefly finding it easier on the front than on Ben’s wheel, but managed to recover some composure by Bainton. On the run back in to Beverley we were passed by Nathan and Shack, who then slowed down tantalisingly before romping off up the road. Somewhere in view of the South Dalton spire I saw 52 mins on the computer and thought our chances of getting round under the hour were fading. But it seemed rude not to put the hammer down, so we pushed hard up the final couple of short hills and by Cherry Burton the time was looking good. It was time for some serious shouting and some raargh! head-down behaviour and despite a slightly disorganised sprint for the line (me forgetting the ‘smoothness’ rule) we crossed it together at 58:41.

Happy with that, for standard road bikes. Be great to see what we could do on full-on TT machines but then we would end up penniless… and drawn to the dark side.

Kudos to the other VC Beverley duo Matt Beaumont and Martin Parker, coming in with a very respectable 1:02 on standard road bikes, in their first ever competitive cycling event. I reckon that’s a time they’ll smash in 2013.

In this world of information overload there now follows a mass of stats, pix and reports on what was essentially a short batter round some A and B roads.

Report and results by Jim Sampson

Some pics on Print my Ride (can’t insert ‘em for copyright reasons):

Ben and Paul 1

Ben and Paul 2

Martin and Matt 1

Martin and Matt 2

Stats from my Garmin

1. Club officials

Rob Brown, Martin Smart and Paul Waddington to remain as club secretary, treasurer and chairman respectively

New ‘posts’ in the club include:

• TT supremo – Chris Holland agreed to champion time trialling within VC Beverley, alerting us to upcoming events, badgering people to do more TTs and possibly getting involved with our own hillclimb event (see upcoming events)
• Kitmeister – Lee Beddows agreed to take charge of the Impsport relationship and be custodian of the online store password. Lee is also going to look into getting decent VC Beverley-branded casquettes made to be given free to each club member (see AOB)
• Sportive co-ordinator – David Connell was press-ganged into being the person who looks out potential sportives worthy of the club’s attendance (and hopefully writing up his excellent reports of gruelling hardship afterwards too).
• Race committee – the following club members agreed to help Rob co-ordinate our summer road race and also help out on the EYRRL event for which we are responsible:  Chris Holland, Lee Beddows, Rich Cutsforth and Paul Cook
• Cross person – Paul Waddington agreed to champion cyclocross within VC Beverley, alerting about upcoming events, badgering people to do it and also helping with our own embryonic CX event.

2. Upcoming events

VC Beverley reliability ride – 5th Feb?

Rob Brown to be in charge of Belgium – researching a potential club road trip to a big event like the Ghent 6 or a major ‘cross race

112k charity team time trial – Paul Waddington to present a fun-packed camping-based option for this high-speed scenic charity ride on 5^th May

Club hillclimb – Trundlegate was suggested as the venue for an end-of-season hillclimb TT. Chris Holland to investigate.

VC Beverley summer road race: Rob Brown to confirm the date

Cyclocross event – Paul W and Martin Smart to investigate running a one-off local race in the 2012 season

3. AOB

Spending club funds. We agreed two principles – 1) that if the club has excess cash we should use it and 2) we should spend it on things that promote the club overall. We therefore agreed to subsidise anyone who enters the East Yorkshire Road Race League or the Big G sportive in VC Beverley colours to the tune of £10. If possible we will also use club funds to buy everyone a branded casquette that makes us look even more PRO than usual.

Thursday ride upgrade. From mid Feb – let’s say the 16^th – onwards, we agreed to run this as a more organised chaingang, on reasonably flat wide A-roads (at least during dark nights), riding ‘bit and bit’ (single-line through-and-off) for around 25 miles or so. This will allow slower riders to do short turns, or just sit in, but still get a good workout and hopefully not get dropped, while faster riders can batter it on the front as they wish.

Club run discipline reminder. When someone shouts ‘car up’ or ‘car back’ and we need to ‘single up’, jolly well single up. Here endeth the lesson.

‘New to road racing’ section on the website. Paul W to write up a quick guide and get some links together for race newbies.

New award. ‘Best turned out rider’ award launched and to be awarded at the 2013 AGM. If you need to know the criteria, you’re clearly not cool enough.

Facebook and Twitter. We agreed that we couldn’t be bothered with a Facebook page but that a VC Beverley Twitter account would be good. Paul W to set up and call for potential tweeters.

The 'right kind of mud' according to local CX experts.

With Maffers from Malton Wheelers, not actually looking too muddy

The ground in Centre Vale Park was absolutely saturated and by the time the Vets/women went off , parts of the course resembled Glastonbury on a bad year. Recce’ing the course was a bad idea for anyone without a pressure washer or spare bike so I elected to warm up by harassing pedestrians on the park’s paths.

Following the usual massed-start madness the route climbs quickly and before you know it, you’re on the fabled cobbled climb which is the key feature of this circuit. On a crowded first lap it was impossible to ride it, so I joined several lines of riders carrying bikes as we stumbled up the steep slippy cobbles as quick as possible. Then there was a fast downhill where disc brakes came into their own at the bottom, and a series of muddy features including a steep drop-off where a big crowd had gathered to watch riders face-plant into the foot-deep swamp at the bottom. Much more mud and a couple of planks and that was a lap done.

Key moment for me was having the brass band strike up the Monty Python theme tune as I rode past on the third lap or so. But proudest moment of all was successfully negotiating a narrow gateway and 90-degree bend onto the cobbles and riding the climb all the way to the top. I was helped by the Boardman’s ultra-low 34×32 bottom gear and by the top, was virtually riding on the rear wheel alone thanks to the gradient.

Managed the climb a second time on the bell lap, by which time the riders ahead had pretty much given up trying to ride the final few sections of the course, so we all ran through the gloop and over the planks and managed to mount up to cross the line.

In the end I got 36th out of 103 finishers which wasn’t too bad and can largely be attributed to the Boardman’s disc brakes and low gearing, without which I’d have been doing a great deal more slithering and scrambling.

Great atmosphere and a highly recommended circuit for anyone who likes mud and challenges. Thanks to the organisers of the Yorkshire Points Series, of which this was the final event, who do a lot of standing around in the cold making it all happen – and even gave each rider a bottle of Duvel as a recovery drink.

Welcome to the new riders who joined us on what turned out to be a good long steady ride on the first non-windy day for ages.

Not a bad turnout for the middle of winter!

Photographic evidence, taken before we were joined by a couple of latecomers…

David has a quick write-up on the forum here:

Despite a low turnout there was some good festive modification going on, as the pix show.

We were joined in the caff by PFS and Paul Cook, so nearly made double figures in numbers!

Venue The Woolpack, Westwood Road, Beverley.

Please post any AOB items in the relevant forum thread.

Meet up first for beers at the Corner House 7ish…

Proper Yorkshire mud

Well the bike’s been hosed down and the kit washed, and with a cool glass of Budvar in hand it’s time to take stock of mine, Gary K and Droppy’s first ‘cross event ever, and Martin’s first of 2011.

We managed not to make too many newbie errors, even removing bottle cages before actually arriving at the venue, some scrubby land in Tong, near Bradford, where the course shared space with some “It’s gripped-sorted!” types slithering around in Mad Max style offroad vehicles. Still there were some PRO cross set-ups – turbos, pergolas, generators, vans that said ‘Dugast’ on the back and even a guy afterwards who’d bought his own pressure washer.

There was also masses of youth in attendance, encouraging for those of us looking to get kids into cycling – lots of young ‘uns cooling down from the 15 min U10 race, with Islabikes very much the dominant brand. My lads will be getting muddy in VC Beverley colours soon!

Despite Martin and my advanced age we decided to go with the seniors rather than vets so we’d all be able to ride together. This didn’t look like such a brilliant idea as the start time drew near -pretty much everyone waiting for the vets to finish looked kinda lean and mean. Lots of cross bling about the place, some very natty carbon canti brakes and exotic tyres too. But my Boardman drew a bit of attention for its disc brakes and general spanky newness. Martin’s livid green Kona can, of course, be seen from space – at least before a race.

Anyway, to the racing. We managed to get a sighting lap of the course, which was a) longer than anticipated and b) a bit jolly technical. The start wound in zigzags up a field, punctuated in one straight by two planks that only the real experienced guys had the skill and bottle to bunnyhop. For me it was a cackhanded dismount, a scuttle and a frantic remount, every lap. Lesson number 1 of cross is that good dismount/remount skills (or whatever the technical cross term is) can lose or gain you loads of time.

The course then snaked up the hill some more, with some really tight turns. Lesson number 2 of cross is that road cornering techniques (leaning in, weight front and over the side) create massive understeer, causing the hapless newbie to bin it. This I did during the race on one occasion. Then we had our first proper ‘portage’ section, a repeat ‘up down’ of an unrideable slope. here I was well impressed with my new Spesh MTB shoes, which dug in nicely up the steep muddy ground. The course then took a gentle downhill, providing time for a quick breather, before a really quite technical downhill wooded section. On the sighting lap we walked the first steep drop but during the race we went for it, weight thrown back mtb-style and alternating front and back brake pressure to try and try and keep the wheels rolling rather than sliding.

In fact an mtb would have been much better here: big fat tyres, super high BB and wide bars would have been just the thing for getting over logs and roots etc. However the Boardman did a great job of getting me up the steep climb to the foot of a nasty portage section. And once back on the tracks and grass the bulk of an mtb would doubtless have slowed things down some more.

So that was the sighting lap. The massed start was a real Gladiator moment and I just opted to stay the f*ck out of the way of any hardmen and find a wheel to follow. In fact it’s surprising how quickly 60 or so riders (I didn’t count but that’s a guess) string out and settle down. Martin tells me that the order of the first guys into the first corner can decide the race.

It rapidly becomes apparent to the cross newbie who’s done road racing that drafting has much less relevance. At the lower end of cross speeds, the main source of resistance comes from the ground and the various obstacles, not from the wind. So lesson number 3 of cross is that you get to ride at your own pace, rather than being compelled to ride at the speed of superior beings. This doesn’t make it easy, though: it’s a hard effort all the time with just the very occasional easy downhill to recover, and Droppy’s wrist-mounted HRM (there’s no use in cross for computers) recorded 1100 cals burned in an hour, which doesn’t seem at all unreasonable.

As the race progressed I got to meet some of the proper quick guys as they lapped me with a shout of “rider!” or “on your right/left”. They were proper quick and the best moment was the really terrifying noise that carbon rims make under heavy braking in the wet. The source of the scary noise came past me in the now near-dark woodland section, doing even scarier grunty breathing like something out of an exorcism film.

Without a watch (too rattly) or a computer (it would have been vibrated off) though I hadn’t a clue how much racing there was left until I started to notice the lap boards. Also in evidence was a really dirty great big black cloud, heading our way. For about 3/4 of the race it had been bright and sunny with reasonably dry ground, and I have to confess to having been a little disappointed by these un-Belgian conditions. But the big black cloud did its thing and the final laps ran in a torrential downpour. Which had its predictable effect, making the course slick and slippy. The woodland descent became a rapid out-of-control megaslide and in the end, gravity won and I binned it again into the mud. Up to the start/finish again  in the pouring rain… and it was all over. The winner had finished so it was time to hang out and watch the other remaining riders come in.

No idea about the results yet but I think the VC Beverley order was me, Droppy, Martin and Gary. I’ll post up the results and links to pix when they’re up on BC.

But in summary, cross is an excellent crack. Friendly atmosphere, massive workout, good technical course and some new skills to learn – and it doesn’t hurt when you fall off! We’ll be back for more…

And thanks, as mentioned in the forum thread, to Maffers and Malton Wheelers colleague for shouting us on at the point of the circuit where you really need encouragement.

And finally. Lesson number 4 of cross – wear mitts that don’t have a hole in them. That’s a bit of Martin’s hand, that is. Ouch.