Cicle classic

Photos courtesy of David Partridge

Cicle classic, one of the most interesting UK races of the year, a race mainly based on the small country lanes of Leicestershire with the occasional off-road sector, which on a road bike is pretty tough going and can often sees the size of the bunch reduce greatly with the number of problems you can receive out on the course.

Saturday morning, with torrential rain for the majority of the morning and with rain forecasted for the afternoon up in Melton Mowbray where the race was being held I decided to hop on the turbo and do my activation on that for an hour before driving up in the afternoon to drive the sectors and last 20km of Sundays race.

It was quite clear just from driving the sectors how tough the race was going to be, with big puddles on the corners and covering the potholes as well as many patches of slick mud so was going to be vital to stay up near the front, especially across the Somerberg which was the worst looking sector, just over 2km long and ridden in both directions it was a point where the race was surely going to break up.

Once we had visited Morissons for lunch the next day and a few snacks it was back to the hotel for dinner, a big tub of chicken and pasta I had cooked earlier and then it was ready for bed before the 6:30 wake up the next morning.

Numbers pinned on and a little spin on the rollers we road down to the start line, although everyone came towards the line from the wrong direction it made for an interesting couple of minutes with everyone trying to turn around to face the correct direction. With the neutral started, that seemed to go quicker up the hill out of Melton than it did on the flat we had to stop again just before kilometre zero due to a crash at the back of the bunch. However, we soon got going and the race was off.

A few little moves went off the front in the first few kilometres of the race, I managed to resist not going and instead saving my legs after a fairly big block of training after Axel ready for the second half of the season. Approaching the small lap the first time a number of riders went down on the corner just before the feed station, luckily I managed to avoid them and get back onto the bunch but was just an indication of how important it was going to be to have to stay up near the front, we then hit the first sector a little while later and although only fairly short the bunch split to pieces, just missing the front split I managed to get back on and gradually work my way towards the front ready for the Somerberg, I tried a cheeky little attack 2km out from the sector just to get ahead of the bunch but was soon brought back, however I managed to get over the sector without any problems and was still in the front group which had probably whittled down to about 50 riders at this point halfway through the race.

From then on the pack just kept getting smaller and smaller, as we headed back to the somerberg for the second time a group of 4 managed to get off the front, 2 of which managed to stay, the very deplete bunch of around 30 riders chased pretty hard but we could never bring them all the way back. Coming into the last 10km I started to cramp up pretty bad, mainly from not drinking enough, only having 3 bottles when I normally have 4 in a race like that made for an interesting last few kilometres trying to stretch them out as we descended into the Melton. Due to an event clashing at the same time we had to take quite a technical route back towards the finish with a number of tight bends in the last kilometre, negotiating them all safely the sprint opened up and after being originally boxed in managed to squeeze around the right hand side and nudge into the top ten for 9th place.

I have now got a little bit of rest to recover from my first half of the season which has seen me race abroad 6 times already, and also in 3 UK national races, getting some decent results along the way such as 4th on the final stage of Axel UCI 2.1 and 5th at Guido Reybrouck UCI 1.1, but am now ready to go again.

A massive thank you to David Partridge for the absolutly mega photos,

Pedal potential for their continued support,

Rawvelo for helping me keeping me fuelled, I am absolutly loving their Chocolate Orange energy bars an Blueberry and Hibiscus Caffeine gel

And Galibier for the amsome kit, helping to get round my training rides

TC