Race Report from Nick – Nick Hardy Memorial Road Race
Date: Sunday 13th April 2014
Organiser: Angus Bike Chain
Well, it wasn’t really a race for me, just survival. I was a bit worried about riding on those narrow roads in a big bunch, but that didn’t turn out to be much of an issue! It kicked off ok, I was expecting it to be fast, but they just kept accelerating from the gun. I lost Alasdair and Steve at that point.
I saw Pedro sprinting past me and tried to get on his wheel but missed. I don’t even know if it was the wheel I was following that got gapped or me, but it didn’t take long for me to be sitting up and looking behind me for a group. The problem was that there wasn’t one! It was just ones and twos. So I had to catch the people getting dropped ahead and it wasn’t until I caught an Aberdeen wheeler (who promptly vomited on his arm) that I had someone to work with. It was into the wind and used a LOT of energy.
Then I was very pleased to see Pedro and get caught by a slightly bigger group at the end of the first lap (when I took a wrong turn and nearly went home) but we shed most of them on the first rise leaving us with (at most) a group of 5. A deeside guy, two Aberdeen wheelers and us. Well, until about 10k to go when I bonked and the elastic snapped.
Those last 10k were pretty grim. I lost 3 minutes to Pedro in that time. I was pretty sure that I was going to vomit.
I finished 39th, 17 minutes down on the winner.
So it was fun!
Let’s do it again next year…
Right, Paul?
Results can be found on the British Cycling website.
Well done chaps great effort!
COG Velo