Des Hanlon Memorial Classic 2015

I have tired legs today but my fingers are grand so time to give them a workout with my report of my (non-) race…

This was my first A3 race and I can’t say that I was looking forward to it. The distance, the likely pace, the climbs, and the likely standard of competition, were all intimidating me days ahead of the race. Combined with that was a week where I felt out of sorts generally, not helped by screwing up my sleep patterns (one of those weeks where, when you know you should already be in bed, you spot a spider walk up the wall and decide that the best thing ever is to sit there and watch it for the next hour). So my head was kind of all over the place heading into the race. I never even entertained the thought that I could be competitive in this race, my ambition was to try to get round in the main bunch, but I was undermining my confidence at every opportunity.

The trip there was uneventful, which was a good start. There was the moment where a car with bike rack passed us on the road, the passenger gawping closely at us (with our bikes on the back) presumably trying to figure out if we were notable competition. His face passed through a variety of emotions, from trepidation (“Is that Nicholas Roche in there? Please no!”), to confusion (“No, not Nichola Roche. Who the feck are they?”), to dismissal (“Pfft, nobodies! Drive on.”). I dropped their wheel(s) shortly afterwards. *sigh*

We parked behind the goalposts of one of the football pitches at sign-on, the car park was already full. I felt a lot of sympathy for the marshal who was directing us along the side and trying to keep cars off the pitch itself, only to see a large 4-wheel drive take the world’s widest sweeping turn, covering maximum area of the pitch to slot his jalopy behind the goalposts. I heard an exasperated “Jaysus!”, or regional equivalent, from the marshal as he ran over. What a thankless task he was lumbered with, thanks to all of the marshals for making it a painless experience for us on the day.

The warmup was hard work for me, not a good sign which did little to settle my head. As I waited at the start line I heard someone say that our bunch was 200 strong. I could believe it, it looked huge. Mentally I was still quite detached as we rolled out. Which perhaps is why I drifted towards the back from the start. Not helped by some bizarre undertaking during rollout, despite my being as far left as I thought it was possible to get. One guy in front of me nearly lost it completely on right turn at the roundabout, it was very nearly a display of impressively incompetent bike handling before the race even started.

Once on the main road the speed went up pretty fast. My legs didn’t like that at all. My head wasn’t liking it much either. I’ve been in nervous bunches before, the bunch in A4 last year was very nervous at the same point from what I recall, but this seemed worse than anything I’d experienced to date. Some of that was me, but there was a definite air of nerves about the bunch as a whole. Not helped by up to 200 riders being spread ditch to ditch on a busy enough road with two solid white lines down the centre for long stretches of it.

When I wasn’t watching every twitch of the bikes ahead of me, trying to predict the inevitable compressing/braking and stretching out of the bunch, I was looking at the riders to the far right. It never ceases to amaze me that riders are perfectly willing to put themselves on the wrong side of the road with no obvious desire to move up and clearly no intentions of moving back in. There were guys riding in what little lard shoulder existed on the opposite side. How they expected to merge back in safely when encountering oncoming traffic I have no idea. But “merge back in” they did, well “shove back in” would be more accurate. There were several near pile-ups, and lots of panicked braking, each time. Some guys stayed out there though, happy to play chicken with the oncoming cars. Few were willing to play chicken with oncoming lorries and tractors though, even bone-headed stupidity has its limits apparently.

I ended up in the ditch several times. One of those times I swung left while unclipping as the entire bunch pushed left in the face of yet another oncoming car, thankfully I rode safely onto a gravel patch and rolled on safely as riders disentangled their bikes in the centre of the road. Another time I was pushed towards a large pothole at the road edge, and had to come to a complete stop and wait for the rest of the bunch to go past before chasing back on for a few metres. A few other times I ended up riding on the soft verge, again as the bunch swayed left, but thankfully hit nothing, stayed upright, and riders behind kindly left space for me to merge back in again. So no serious mishaps at all but my heart was going out of the race at a rate of knots as I watched riders go straight back out to the right again having just skimmed past another car, priming things for the next near crash for the umpteenth time.

The commissaire, who had (helpfully) made a point before the race of warning against riding on the wrong side of the road into blind bends, drove up and rattled off a few race numbers on the tannoy belonging to riders on the wrong side. “If your number is called out a second time you are out of the race”, he said. Great stuff, I thought, he’s taking action when it’s really needed to keep this massive bunch safe. Some riders briefly moved back in before moving straight back out again, others didn’t even bother moving back in in the first place. For many riders it seems that the other side of the race is where races are to be played out. Over the next while the commissaire reminded riders that this was the last warning, no really this time, honest, no more warnings will be given, okay maybe another half dozen or so. Whatever little authority and control the commissaire had to start with was well and truly undermined. By himself with his repeated unfulfilled threats. Good man, I’m glad I pay a hefty license fee to Cycling Ireland so that commissaires like yourself are there to look out for my safety and the safety of all riders. You might as well have stayed at home to be honest, at least then you wouldn’t have reassured the repeat offenders that they need have absolutely no fear of actually being penalised for riding illegally and dangerously. If you make a (perfectly reasonable) threat to penalise riders, then carry it out, otherwise just don’t bother because you are making yourself part of the problem.

By the time we were approaching the Castlecomer climb I was no longer racing, I was just thinking of nothing but staying upright for the day. My nerve was gone. I, and everyone else, knew the importance of that climb, I knew that things were almost certainly going to split the first time up it and that your race was over if you were behind the split. But I couldn’t bring myself to take the risks I’d have had to take to move up the bunch. So I hit the climb almost at the very back. More of the bunch went up it fast than I expected but I went around quite a few stalled riders even in the first few metres. It hurt more than it should have though, and with my head already gone I lost motivation with every pedal stroke. It took a big effort to simply hang on, and even then that was by the skin of my teeth. Shortly afterwards I got dropped.

I worked hard with a few other riders and we got back on. Every bend and every bump in the road were hard work though. I usually like that, once I’m over the initial pain barrier I usually settle into a race. Not this time though. I struggled with everything. I usually like descending, and a gust of wind would blow me up a climb with no effort, but my nerve to descend simply wasn’t there and the climbs were eating into my legs. I see-sawed on and off the back for few more kilometres before I just gave up and let the wheel ahead of me go.

The brain that had only moments been before been screaming at me to give up suddenly switched tack and started berating me for giving up. Jaysus! ’Twas like being a belligerent teenager and a belligerent parent all wrapped up in one screwed up head. My inner teenager “never wanted to race ANYWAY!”, my inner parent responded with “Racing? You call THIS racing? Hah!”. I eventually jumped on a passing wheel in the hope that the physical pain in my legs would distract me from the stupid voices in my head. A group of us ended up working haphazardly but the tail end of the bunch was disappearing into the distance despite our efforts.

I gritted my teeth on what few flat stretches we seemed to encounter, but I consciously drifted off the back on the faster descents, my confidence there not helped by coming across a crash after a right bend over a bridge. I started to enjoy the climbs though, my legs had apparently decided they were for more than just decoration. I unwittingly rode away from our small cluster of riders on the last climb of the first lap, and finding myself alone for the next few kilometres I decided I’d just head straight to the finish, no point in doing the second lap. But towards the end of the first lap a group of 5 or 6 guys went past at speed. Someone yelled to jump on and I reacted more out of instinct than any real desire, and found myself amongst them.

We worked well for the next while, I was enjoying myself again. Turning left onto lap 2 was suddenly the logical thing to do, taking the right turn to the finish seemed like a very distant and stupid idea. One guy in our group yelled that the group ahead of us was only 30 or 40 seconds up the road. I’ve no idea whether he’d really asked a marshal for was just making it up, it didn’t matter as it achieved the intended goal of motivating us to push harder. One guy attacked from our little group as we approached Castlecomer for the second time. I’ve no idea why. He stalled on the climb itself and I found myself enjoying the climb this time round, to the extent that I rode away from our little group and never saw most of them again.

Over the rest of that second lap I was on my own for a while and was then joined by 2 guys from it, one of them a big strong guy wearing a junior number. I was glad to have his wheel to follow for big chunks of road, it was hard work but fun. We split up on a few of the climbs but usually rejoined afterwards. We picked up a few stragglers along the way but still no sign of any bunch ahead. Our race was clearly long since over but we pushed hard, I think we were all trying to get as much useful training out of the day as we could.

I worked hard second time up the last climb, only for the junior to come round me in the last 100m or so and sprint as best he could over the top. He rolled almost to a stop and as I came past him he said “Where is the finish line?”. “About 15km up the road”, I said. I didn’t hear his response but there was an air of pain about it. He saw the funny side of it though, I think.

At some during that second lap my foot felt like it shifted on the pedal. Sure enough my Speedplay cleat was trying to detach itself from my shoe. That cleat has been solidly and reliably attached to that shoe for 2 years or more now - I mainly just use those shoes for racing so the cleats are fairly lightly used. Typical of my love/hate relationship with Speedplay to be honest, when it’s “hate” it’s well and truly “HATE!”, the pedals and cleats pick their moments to cause me pain quite effectively. It stayed on until the end though, although my foot had a more than generous amount of float for quite a while there. I had mental images of having to push myself along scooter-style for the last 20km or so, which would obviously have done wonders for my credibility.

In the last 10km to the finish line there were a few what could only be described as attacks from within our group of 5 or so. Chances are it was just people getting in some extra training but it was funny at the time. Particularly when a (different) junior sprinted from behind about 100m out from the finish line. It seemed like several people were keen to earn the adulation that goes with 185th (or so) place

So I alternately raced, and felt sorry for myself, and raced again, and mostly just trained hard, for 3h25m. The next sizeable bunch up the road were about 8 minutes ahead of me/us, another sizeable bunch about 3 minutes ahead of that. I think the main chasing bunch of the day were 20 minutes ahead of me, the winners about 4 minutes ahead of them if I understand correctly. So I was never in the race but I enjoyed myself regardless, there were clearly some *very* impressive performances up the road though, that level of effort was on an entirely different planet to mine - I might delude myself into believing that an 8 minute gap isn’t huge over that distance but it really is, and a 25 minute gap is just impossible to comprehend. I think I’ve well and truly reached my level of inability by getting to A3, but hopefully I can at least have fun during races even if I’m not going to be competitive. I’ll do the Des Hanlon again though, it’s a great race.

Oh, and to the organisers, I have to say sorry. As we were driving home we found our entrance/exit to the off-pitch parking spaces blocked by a parked car (on the road), and I, and several others, had no choice but to drive across one of the pitches to get out between two other cars parked on the road. Hopefully the pitch is okay, though it probably feels like my legs do today.

All that and I forgot to add the crowning moment of the day. That evening, as I left my 5yr-old daughter’s room having put her to bed, she uttered a heartfelt “I’m sorry you didn’t win the race, dad!”. She even added a little sob, it was quite impressive.

Brushing aside the ludicrous notion that I could ever win that race, I said thanks and that I was sorry too. Her tone switched to one of clear disappointment and impatience as she followed that up with “Will you ever win a race?”. This time I was the one that sobbed.

doozerie wrote: »

I think I’ve well and truly reached my level of inability by getting to A3, but hopefully I can at least have fun during races even if I’m not going to be competitive. I’ll do the Des Hanlon again though, it’s a great race.

No need to be so disheartened! The Des Hanlon is in a league of its own compared with other A3 races. You'll be fine in other A3 races, just forget about the juniors up the road. ;-)

JK.BMC wrote: »

Did the A3 race

Fair assessment. Sometimes no further words are required. We know how you feel.

Amprodude wrote: »

How many A4's were there today? Was there over 100?

Just over 80 in the A4's…A3/Junniors had 155+ A1/A2 -95+ Ladies race almost 30.

Cond0r wrote: »

It was announced at the start that there were 200 in the A3 bunch. Where are these numbers from?

These are the numbers give or take 5.

morana wrote: »

its too many. That will work against the sport in the long run. I really feel they should have 2 races when the field is that size.

course assessments needed to gauge (as best possible), the maximum safe field size, based on risk assessment and course history , then on line entry to restrict the field entry.

worst thing to have 200 turning up for a category on a circuit that can only safely handle 130.

not always feasible to split a huge a3 into two separate races. ( not enough lead cars or commissaires present ).