Drafting Problems Again

Today is my third crack at the Clumber Duathlon. It’s a big event and quite prestigious but it’s not the most exciting. I probably wouldn’t have done it a third time had last year’s event not had to be held on an improvised course due to road works on the main road which meant I couldn’t compare my times with those of the previous year. So last year I had no idea whether I’d improved or not. This year we are back to the original course, so I have a point of comparison with 2007. This event is also a bit of preparation for the Ashbourne Hellathon in late April.

It also doesn’t help that Derby’s game has been mysteriously moved to a 1pm kick off, which I didn’t know about until last week and means I have to seriously get a move on to get to there for kick off.

L is with us today, offering support, albeit armed with plenty of books and a flask of tea. The ‘real’ books are just a cover story I fear; no doubt she’s sneaked her ipod into her bag, which will have her latest audio book on. We’re both aurally reading the same book at the moment. Unfortunately I’m as slow a reader by ear as I am by eye and today’s probably the day when she overtakes me.

The event itself goes rather well and I’m particularly pleased with my bike section, although I have ‘drafting’ problems again. A referee on a motorbike tells me to back off from the bike in front of me and stop drafting. Not that I thought I was. I'm not sure what he expects me to do. The road is packed, there are bikes everywhere. I'm overtaking slower bikes, faster cyclists who are doing the longer distance are going past me, plus there are others going at roughly the same pace as me. I pull away from the curb out of everyone’s air and then get accused of blocking the traffic. Then when I move back he accuses me of drafting again. I can’t win.

What makes it worse is whilst all this was going on; I lose a few places. One of which is to gal who sneakily slips up the inside of me, whom I then furiously tail, but not too closely whilst the referee is still around, into transition. I stalk her for a while on the second run and then overtake her, which reduces the girl count to three, two of which were GB team members. Flushed with this success, I go past a couple of guys who also had the audacity to pass me on the bike.

Overall my first run is much the same as two years ago, and my second run is thirty seconds slower. So no improvement there, but my bike is three minutes quicker. Must have been all that ‘drafting’. Together with a few improvements in transition my time is five minutes quicker than in 2007. So the two pints last night didn’t seem to hurt, nor did a bit of late night with L. So same preparation again next time I think.

A fast getaway for the match doesn’t happen because they won’t, quite rightly, let my bike out of transition until all the others have finished the bike leg. So by the time L drops me at the match, the game is nine minutes in and Derby strangely have already scored. The rest of the game is all Bristol and they must feel particularly hard done by, because when they eventually score a late equaliser, we go straight down the other end and score again, against the run of play. Well, I suppose it was about time we had a bit of luck. The performance though was worryingly straight out of Billy Davies’s text book.

In the evening we head off something different, to Basford and the Horse and Groom, where we haven’t been in eons. It’s surprisingly good with a few dark beers on, to coincide with Nottingham’s Stout and Porter trail. This trail hopefully means we should be in for a few good weeks at the local pubs.