Dear member,

As part of our continued work to stop the decline of UK road racing we have today launched a Facebook campaign to “Keep Racing on the Roads” and encourage you to please show your support by joining the group.

As my first race back after quite a long layoff from a knee injury - I approached Ilton feeling pretty nervous about how I would perform. It's a big unknown when your trying to come back to fitness so I decided to expect nothing and see what happened.

I was racing alongside fellow team-mate James Smith. It was a big surprise to arrive and find out we had a team mechanic for the race! James had organised a chap called Mark Shoe from "the creaky crank" to look after our bikes - we'll post some more info about his company soon; but if you're in the need for bike tuning services in the Somerton area - give him a call on 07905811451.

The days weather was pretty good overall - mixed sunshine and cloud and ... as always, windy as hell! Riders complaining about the early season cold before the race, but it's all soon forgotten as the race got underway.

With only 20 or so riders signed on; it looked to be an interesting race - riders keeping a close eye for any moves. On the second lap James Smith and Ben Luckwell rode up the road and managed to stay a good 45 seconds up on the bunch right till the end of the race. I heard James shout encouragement to me to "GO!!!" and as I stomped on it on the first corner of the second lap; Ben and James came through and the brake formed - right into the wind. I didn't have the confidence in my ability at my current level of fitness and decided not to attempt to hold on to it... mistake? well maybe, they didn't come back but my excuse was to try and control any attempts to chase. 

As it happened, a few other riders did get away but no-one caught Ben and James and they finished the race, Luckwell taking the win closely followed by our rider James Smith.

I finished in the bunch with six up the road, coming fifth and netting me 11th place. I was pretty pleased with that overall and now feel I've got something good to build on. Next time I'll have the confidence to be a bit more aggressive - we'll see...

South West Region's:- New Race Series and Trophies

The South West's Road Race Work Group have worked closely with both their REO (Andrew Parker) and Talent Development Coach (Rik Jamieson).
to provide some exiting new series of road and circuit races for 2010.

So not wanting to let it stop my riding I packed my gorgeous Cyfac up carefully and boarded Qantas Flight 9 last Sunday.  I want to treat this work placement as a 3 month training camp, riding hard when I’m not dealing with environmental issues on the pipeline.  I arrived on Tuesday after the mammoth flight, and dealt with the jet lag, un packed my bike and got out on the bike Thursday and Friday morning and heard about a race on Saturday from my friend Pete ‘too easy’ Thompson who has just signed to the Virgin Blue team.  Its Bike Week in Brisbane and one of the clubs is promoting the big Bike Week Cup criterium at the Nundah circuit. 

Rolling into the circuit it was going to be fast with 13 Virgin Blue riders there under the watchful eye of their DS ex Tour de France rider Pat Jonker.  The new team keen to impress and with those numbers they would be tough to beat.  About 60 riders started the A grade race and the other local teams were up for it too, with the Merida Team and Fusion trying to get involved in the early moves all with heavy presence of Virgin riders.  At half distance in the 1 hour plus 2 lap race a break of 4 had got established at 30 seconds with 2 Virgin riders, I decided it was time to make an effort to bridge as this looked like the winning move.  Virgin marked me straight away sent 2 guys on my wheel crystal cranking it!  We got a good gap and one of the lads started to tap through until we were about 50m off the wheel, my heart rate was banging out 197!  It was hard as hell closing the gap as the jet lag started to make its presence felt, the Virgin rider saw his chance and jumped the gap and I just couldn’t get over as the break drove hard.  Gutted!  Back in the bunch it was frantic and fast for the rest of the race until the last 10 mins when everyone prepared to a bunch sprint for minor the placings, with sprints for minor placing not my bag I tucked in safely at the back of the bunch.  Sure enough Virgin Blue wrapped up 1^st, 2^nd the prime and the bunch sprint.

It was a good race, different to the brutal stop start nature of the UK crits.  It was really fast on the sweeping circuit with an average speed of 46kph and a lot of time in the high 50’s in narrow echelons.  Good training and I know I need to go work on my top end jump to shut those gaps, too much of tester at times!