As Lance Armstrong cruised to his 6th Tour de France victory in Paris, I
experienced my first taste of bike racing. I’d raced unicycles before,
but not bikes.
Two years ago I dragged the family along to watch the BHPC race at
Castle Combe. Last year we’d planned to take Jamie (my riding companion
on the last couple of serious rides) to see the racing at Castle Combe.
But it clashed with Bristol’s Biggest Bike Ride, so we went to
Thruxton instead. Then, when Jamie got his Speed Machine at the end of
last June, we decided that we’d race at Castle Combe this year.
When the date was announced it turned out that Jamie couldn’t go, as he
was due to fly to Canada the next day to spend time with his in-laws.
So I went and raced on my own (with the wife and kids along again to watch).
When I set off on a warm up lap of the 1.85 mile circuit, I was at first
amazed at how easy it was. The bike felt fantastically light without a
pannier and lock, and the combination of a slight downhill and a strong
tailwind meant that I was able to hit 30mph effortlessly along the front
straight (at least for the first few laps). Then came the hairpin at
Quarry. Throughout the race my speed consistently dropped to about
13mph within a few seconds of turning into the wind.
Due to the shape of the course, I'm pretty sure that most of the riding
was uphill and into the wind. It would have been so much easier if the
race had been run anti-clockwise - why did the BHPC have to be different
and run the race clockwise? Perhaps someone decided the chicanes would
be too dangerous at 40mph. The back ‘straight’ was not fun, with the
hills and the headwind. I spent a lot of time in the granny ring. It’s
quite disconcerting when the birds circling overhead start to look like
buzzards...
The idea of the race seemed to be to ride for 2 hours, then ride one
more lap and see who managed to ride the furthest overall. The warm up
lap was the hardest, then the first lap of the race itself was pretty
hard too. After that it got easier. The next 40 minutes weren’t too
bad at all, apart from the wind. After an hour I was having doubts
about completing the race, and the last half hour was really hard work.
In the end I managed 17 laps (31.74 miles at an average speed of 16.3mph
and a maximum speed of 30.9mph), being passed every couple of laps by a
pack of 3 containing Mr Larrington (who slid off the track spectacularly
at the end of his last lap, but I think he was unhurt). I was placed
25th out of 33 (including all the faired machines), or a perfectly
acceptable 19th out of 26 in the unfaired category (bearing in mind that
unfaired includes machines with tail fairings, which seems a bit silly
to me!).
Catherine took a few photos, including the best shots I’ve got so far of
me riding the Street Machine. I was amazed when I realised just how
high up I look:
<URL:http://www.speedy5.freeserve.co.uk/z-04072501danny.jpg>
<URL:http://www.speedy5.freeserve.co.uk/z-04072505danny.jpg>
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Danny Colyer (the UK company has been laughed out of my reply address)
<URL:http://www.speedy5.freeserve.co.uk/danny/>
"He who dares not offend cannot be honest." - Thomas Paine