SERRL, Brenchley, Cat 2,3,4

My main aim today was much the same as for the Tandridge race yesterday ie. just finish the race and get some quality training.

Following the debarkle of yesterday's race, I was looking forward to this one with more trepidation than enthusiasm. One thing I had in my favour today was that I'd raced on this circuit previously so I knew:

1. the layout of the circuit and what to expect, and importantly,
2. how to get to the race headquarters!

The Brenchley circuit is a little more interesting than Tandridge yesterday. The race consisted of 9 laps of a 10 km circuit and the circuit includes a hill. The hill is only about 1 km long and starts out at quite a comfortable gradient but by the time you reach the halfway point it's starting to get quite steep, the final 200 metres being the steepest, and it becomes quite hard work by the time you've ridden up 7 or 8 times! At the top of the climb is a left turn then a long gradual descent, another left turn, and flat until the climb again. The finish line is about ²/₃ of the way up the climb.

I'd spent the previous evening making the much needed adjustments (see yesterday's race for details) to the bike and stuffing myself with food (what an exciting social life I lead!).

After getting the bike ready and going for a short ride around the car park I immediately felt much more comfortable on the bike so the adjustments I made were good. My 2 team mates for the day, James Lett (who I hadn't met before) and James Peckham, arrived about 30 minutes after I did. Despite arriving so early at the race, I still didn't seem to find the time to do a decent warm-up. Never mind, the first 1 km of the race is neutral!

The race started off as usual with most of us happy to sit in the bunch and get warmed up. There were the usual one or two suicide breaks where some guys, for what reason I don't know, decide to break away by themselves after 5 km and use up all their energy. By about lap 4, some more serious breakaway groups were starting to form that looked like they may have half a chance of succeeding so I made sure I stayed near the front. When the first decent breakaway did form, I found myself still in the main bunch and wanting to make sure that I finished the race, decided not to hammer myself trying to bridge the gap alone. James Lett rode very strongly for several kilometres to try to get across to the 4-man breakway group. I joined one of the "Arctic" riders near the front of the group, blocking and ready to go if anybody chased after James. Unfortunately James couldn't quite make it to the break before they reached the climb and having made so much effort bridging the gap, was unable to catch and stay with the break and ended up back in the main bunch with the rest of us.

About 1 lap later a chase group formed, again without me in it! They managed to get and hold a reasonable lead over the main group so toward the end of lap 6, I made a couple of attempts to get across to them on the flat section a few kilometres before the climb. The attempts proved unsuccessful though as that same "Arctic" rider was looking after his team mates and dragging the bunch back to anybody who tried to get away. I finally managed to get away at the bottom of the climb and got onto the back of the chase group just after the top. One lap later, we caught 2 of the 4 breakaway riders halfway up the climb who'd run out of steam. With the break down to only 2 tired guys now, we quickly caught them so found ourselves at the head of the race. Unfortunately for us, another chase group had formed behind and caught us with about 1 ¹/₂ laps to go so we ended up in a group of 15.

The penultimate ascent of the climb was a real killer for me despite nobody putting in a serious attack which I expected. I just managed to hang on to the back of the group though and with about 9 km to go, on the descent believe it or not, 4 guys rode off the front. They managed to get a gap of about 30 seconds and held it to the bottom of the climb - only around 500 metres from the finish, so that was the first 4 places gone. Our group fought it out for fifth place - well I didn't, I was just doing my best to hang on with my heart and lungs working at their maximum!

So overall I felt quite satisfied having finished the race and got some good training in the process. Hopefully the next race at Brenchley in about 6 weeks will be a little easier because of it!