Glendene LVRC RR - Thaxted - Sunday 18th March

Report from Tony Bradford

Frank Rawlins, Ian Turner and I took the start of the Glendene's early season road race, promoted as a League of Veteran Racing Cyclists event.

The course includes sharp little hills at Thaxted and Debden; however, the real influencing factor on the race was the cold, strong northerly wind.

A break of 5 were away up the road in lap 1 of 5 and had a 45 second gap as the first lap drew to a conclusion. The North Road's trio did not feature in this but I joined a small chasing group of 6 as the bunch crossed the finish line for the 2nd time.

It was indicative of the weather that once this group was away and working strongly into the wind they began to close on the smaller lead group and pull away from the bunch. With 2 laps to go the two breakaway groups joined and had a bit of a sort out, dropping one rider along the tail wind section of the course, as speeds reached towards 40mph. With a lap and a half to go I began to think about the finish, consumed an energy gel and then promptly punctured.

I rolled into the HQ to change my inner tube and had this done before the bunch, now 5 minutes behind, came through. With my chances of achieving any praiseworthy performance dashed I chose to get myself around a cup of tea.

Meanwhile, in the bunch Frank broke away with a couple of others for ½ a lap and Ian, riding in his first ever road race, took some long pulls on the front to keep things rolling forward. Both finished the race in the bunch. The race was won by Andrew Cullinane of the Finchley RT.

To take something positive away from every experience is essential. Frank is clear that he is road race fit and I know to order two new tyres and a couple of inners. Ian learned that he needs to give up work, running, climbing and pretty much everything else he does to concentrate on road racing (I am paraphrasing his enthusiastic response to my enquiry - "did you enjoy that then").