Operation Etape du Tour: March update

This month's Etape du Tour training was about continuing to get in lots of climbing and miles, but also adding some speed. I have been trying to get to the Herne Hill velodrome regularly, and have renewed my British Cycling racing licence in a hope of doing some races. I have yet to find a race I feel comfortable about doing though.

This month has been about increasing the overall number of miles as well as doing longer rides.

The plan had been to do a few rides of 100km+ and also to do nearer to 700km.

I also hopes to get in some fast paced rides - they could be done in any format - as a criteria race, track cycling, or latching onto a group at Regents Park. 

At a Herne Hill Velodrome training session

I am pleased to have got in a few sessions at Herne Hill Velodrome. The best day for me ability wise is the Thursday morning, which is intermediate training for Vets and women. However, it's not always possible to go on that day so I try another session. 

On one day I went to the Friday morning session, called Intermediate training. In theory I should be okay in that session as it's intermediate. But because it's all ages, I end up riding with young men less than half my age - well I am not really with them, but hanging onto their wake if I am lucky. Usually after a quarter of a lap the become a speck in the distance before the eventually lap me!

Or they don't get to lap me because I am spent up and out of energy so quickly that I have already swung up and am sauntering around the top of the banking trying to get my breath back by the time they come around again.

That process repeats itself a few times before I am eventually able to join a group of guys who have tired themselves out and are riding at a more normal pace. That "normal" pace is more like my race pace, and by then I can then slot in. This way of riding is a little scary as you know it's going to start as a few rounds of being chewed up and spat out by the bunch. But in the spirit of "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger", I hang in there.

On another day I went to the Tuesday morning session, which is Vet's an Women's skills. As this session is very much about skills (as opposed to speed), and is the next level after the initial track induction session, the level is quite light and the exercises are easily manageable. What I noticed was how long the breaks were between the exercises, and at times I found it bothersome as I could feel my body cooling down. Besides, I wanted to get my money's worth, as well as getting in a decent mileage on my bike.

So what I have learned is that it pays to go to the session that properly suits your fitness level. I hope to do more Thursday sessions than other sessions, and if possible, even move up to the Friday session.

This month I had hoped to take part in a criterium race. After all, I had renewed my British Cycling racing licence, so it would be good to see if I could get some points. Interestingly there were a few races going on over Easter that I could have taken part in, but all of them had something about them that put me off.

Firstly, there was a women's race at the Castle Coombe racing circuit, near Bath. The distance to get there didn't put off.  The issue was that there were two races - one for 4th category only, and then the other one was for Elite, 1st,2nd and 3rd category racers.

I am 3rd category, but there was no way I wanted to race against elite riders. Interestingly, multiple Paralympic medallist Dame Sarah Storey was on the start list in the E123 category race. What chance would I have in that field?? In actual fact I had the fitness and skill of a 4th cat racer and the age to be a 3rd category racers, But this would have been my first race in maybe five years - and even then, that race had was the first one in about eight years and I was easily dropped.

To be honest, I think that 3rd category racers should be given the choice of racing with category E12 or category 4 riders. This should especially be the case for we oldies because according to British Cycling rules people over 40 can never drop lower than 3rd category even if they don't score points or race. Whereas riders under 40 drop down to 4th category if they don't race or score points, meaning they have the chance to start from scratch if they make a come-back, where we are somewhat thrown in at the deep end. 

So with all that in mind, and the added complication of strong winds on an exposed racing track, I decided not to race there.

Another race taking place at the Milton Keynes Bowl was one to consider. However, looking at the results sheet from previous rounds of the race series it seemed that the fields were so small - barely into double figures. I just didn't feel minded to spend all that time travelling up the motorway to Bedfordshire to do something not more than a small team time trial.

The final option for racing was a veteran's league. The British Masters Cycling league is a separate entity from British Cycling and operates under separate rules.

The issue with that was that people aren't put into categories based on points earned, but instead based purely on age group. So a 50-year-old would race others of the same age without taking into account that one 50-year-old might be a former national champion or elite racer, while the other may be a new racer. 

In general, hardly any women turn out for these races so we get lumped in with 60-year-old men. But don't underestimate them. There are still some national champions in there. The women I've seen on the start list are people I raced against many years ago and who wiped the floor with me then.

So all that, coupled with windy conditions on the challenging Hog Hill circuit didn't appeal to me.

So in the end, I didn't do any racing. Hopefully I will get to use my cycle racing licence in the near future, but as you can see, finding a race that is right for me is easier said than done!

Westwood Park, one of my local hills in South London

The positive thing is that I managed to get in some good climbing, and found a route which took in lots of hills in my local area at Crystal Palace. I did my regular 8-hill circuit three times, and then ventured further into Upper Norwood and Thornton Heath for more hills. In the end I did more than 30 hills over 40 miles and with 1500m of climbing. That was tiring, but very satisfying.

This is a link to the route that I took.

So I might not be riding so fast these days, but I can say I have found my climbing legs.

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Operation Etape du Tour: February update

Operation Etape du Tour: January update

Operation Etape du Tour: December update

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Women's road race at Tokyo Olympics - strength and depth

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) recently published the number of places available for each nation and the size of the field in the road races for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Olympic Games rings which represent five participating continents

In the men's road race there are 130 places available, while in the women's race there are 67 places.

Once again this has been followed by the customary outcry and accusations of sexism on the part of the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI).

In an article by cycling campaigner and former professional road racer, Kathryn Bertine she went so far as to suggest that the UCI and the IOC had a policy of "corrupt inequity" that is holding back future Olympians.

I must say that I am not really minded to join the chorus with Katryn Bertine and the numerous other women on this matter. When taking into account the entry criteria for the race, what the Olympics represents, the lack of strength and depth of women's racing compared with men's racing, and the intention to stage a rounded competition, I find it understandable that the field would be the size it is. I cannot see how a women's field of 130 would make for a good quality race in this event, one of the highest levels of women's international cycle racing.

One of the aims of the Olympic movement is to blend sport and culture, and promote sport to everyone across all five continents.

A women's cycle race featured in the Olympics for the first time in 1984 in Los Angeles. At that time the field had only 45 women from 16 nations, most which were in Europe. There wasn't much depth given that outside the top 20 finishers the time gaps over the 79.2km race were huge, with the last placed rider finishing almost 40 minutes behind the winner, Connie Carpenter of the USA.

Bear in mind too, that this event took place within a few weeks of the inaugural women's Tour de France. As funds were not available for women to compete in both sets of races on either side of the Atlantic, riders would have had to choose one or the other, particularly as they will have self-funded their competitions.

Thirty-five years on, the depth of women's racing has increased and many nations have access to funds to allow women to contest the Olympics. Also, riders from more continents are also entering the competition. In Tokyo there will be 42 nations represented in the women's road race, with more nations from Africa than ever before. We could therefore extrapolate that to mean a bigger field.

Indeed the size of the field has increased to almost 70. It is still a lot fewer than the men's field, and the figure has not increased significantly since the Athens Olympics in 2004. (Bear in mind that the men's field for Tokyo will be smaller than the field in Rio 2016.)
The size of the field for the women needs to be considered within the context of the depth of abilities from the different nations, and the question then is, what composition of race is needed when increasing the size of the women's field?

The depth of racing has strengthened, but this is the case when you look at specific continents rather than globally. When comparing the development of cycling between continents there is a vast disparity, meaning that the strength and depth in racing has been driven more from some continents than others - notably Europe, which includes countries like the Netherlands, Italy, and Germany which are churning out very strong riders.

So, if the number of riders in the Tokyo Olympic Women's Road Race is to be increased the result will be a field with a lot more riders from across Europe, plus USA and Australia.

That won't be so much of an Olympic competition tending towards the values and representation of the five contents of the Olympics movement, but more like just another Women's World Tour race.

The top riders, including Britain's Emma Pooley force the pace on Box Hill

So, the Olympic Road Cycling events need to find a way to include riders from the rest of North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and the rest of Australasia while maintaining a high level of competition.

Some nations may well be fielding their best riders, but they may still not be quite at UCI Women's World Tour level.

So it is only fair that the allotted quota of riders from the top nations be capped to a low number, so that those smaller nations that only have one or two riders can still take part in a more harmonised competition than if the field were dominated by nations sending teams with five or six high-ranking UCI Women's World Tour riders.

The qualification criteria for the Tokyo Olympics road race are:

• Nations in the top 15 UCI country rankings
• Highly-ranked individual riders in UCI rankings who represent nations outside of the top 15
• One highly-ranked rider from continental championships (Pan-American, Pan-African Pan-Asian)
• Highly-ranked riders in the 2019 World Road Race Championships, representing nations outside of the top 15
• Host nation (Japan) gets automatic qualification

This has given the opportunity for as many countries as possible to field riders so that a maximum spread of continents are involved in the Olympic Road Race.

When quotas for individual countries are examined, smaller nations may only have space for one or two riders, and these smaller nations are unlikely to have more than one rider who can mix it with the top racers.

So, to those who decry the apparent small field for the women's race and who are calling for a field size comparable to the men's race, I would be interested to know how they propose to increase the field, and how this would be composed.

Being a Londoner, I had the opportunity to watch the women's road race during the 2012 Olympics. What was shown on television and transmitted across the world were the attacks at the front of the 35-strong peloton by the likes of Ellen van Dijk, Kristin, Armstrong, Shelly Olds, Emma Pooley, and other highly-ranked riders. The race looked very exciting.

What those of us who spectated at the side of the road saw, and wasn't shown on TV were the 25 or so riders who couldn't handle the pace and were so far behind the front-runners and the main peloton. Each time the race scaled Box Hill, the gap to the gruppetto (the group of backmarkers) steadily increased, to the point that the last placed riders were easily 10 minutes behind Vos, Armitstead, and Zabelinskaya - the medallists.

These slower riders were mainly from Central American, South American, and Asian nations. They probably did the race of their lives and will definitely have a tale or two for their grand children, even though they were pulled out of the race for being outside of the time limit. But is this really the sort of competition they would have felt happy doing - given that they were probably used to being at the head of the pack in their home nations?

So having a larger field would mean either increasing the number of riders from the stronger nations - which would mean an even larger time gap between the front of the race and the back markers, with them being dropped even before reaching the Doushi Road climb, at KM60. Alternatively the number of riders from the smaller nations could be increased, which will mean far more than 25 riders being shelled off the back on the very testing roads near Mount Fuji, and the majority of them may end up not being allowed to complete the 137km-race.

Furthermore, that scenario would prove costly for those national delegations who may not even have the funds to take so many riders to Tokyo, and this could end up being a waste of money for sports governing bodies, commercial organisations and even the athletes themselves.

In my opinion neither of these scenarios would be a good advert for women's cycle racing.

Mt Fuji and Lake Yamanakako - the setting for the Tokyo Olympics road race

So, before people start calling "foul" to the UCI or the IOC for not having a larger women's field, it is worth bearing in mind the wider implications of simply increasing the number of women racers to equal the men's race men.

It is worth considering the global strength and depth of women's cycling compared to men's cycling, rather than just nominally replicating the size of the men's field.

Hopefully, on Sunday 26th July 2020 the 67-strong field will have the optimal mix of racers that will provide not only a high quality women's competition on the Doushi Road and the Kagosaka Pass, but also enough of a peloton left to see an exciting finale around the  Fuji International Speedway circuit.


UCI document on cycle events in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics


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Hillingdon - a real soggy affair !

Everyone has at least one during the season - it's all part and parcel of the joys of competitive cycling. Given the "summer" that we've had so far many people will have had a few of them. So it was only fair that I get to experience one too - what am I talking about ? A really sopping wet road race.

The type where you've got driving rain whacking you hard in the face as you struggle through a head wind. You try and shelter behind the rider in front of you but you've got the taste of the muck from their rear wheel as you battle to hang in there. So it was my turn today - at the Hillingdon women's road race. Not the best way to end Team Quest race series, but probably a memorable one.

In the old days when this series began, rainy days like this would have scared the riders away. And with the resulting low turn-out it would have been a case of "how many points will I get ?" rather than "let's try and finish in the points". But today, we had the same 20-odd girls turn up to race as usual. Women racing cyclists are definitely getting hardier.

The ride up from my office in Hampton Court, to the Hillingdon Cycle Circuit just west of Southall had been a pretty damp journey. So I wasn't too bothered by the wet.

Of course once the race began, things were a little different. The close proximity of other wheels meant the inevitable faceful of kak. (In fact I could still feel the grit in my teeth an hour after finishing the race.) We were moving that bit faster than when commuting, so it was a slightly riskier situation where cornering and braking were concerned. In fact I found it pretty scary. I really wasn't in a mood to crash !

I suppose on days like these it's quite good for those riders who are seasoned from the rain swept plains of Belgium to come into their own. They can attack hard, much to the chagrin of those, like me, who are more used to riding nearer to the Mediterranean. So the attacks kept coming and coming thanks to the likes of Jayne Kilmartin (Rapha Condor) and Charlotte Blackman (London Dynamo).

I was able to reply for most of the race, but I couldn't handle them attacking on the home strait. The accrued speed I'd picked up going into the sweeping right hand bend that followed made it a lottery as to whether I could stay upright. The fact that the road descended as well made life worse. How do you brake safely in the wet when doing nearly 30mph ?? I've never been that comfortable with that section in the dry. Today I was very nervous.

The race continued on through the evening gloom - only a handful of spectators, prudently bunched under large umbrellas, to shout words of encouragement. There was no talk of any sort between the riders as we cycled across mini streams and splashed through deep puddles. Even though we were riding along as a group, we lived our own personal purgatories to survive the hour long duel. This was a battle against the elements rather than against each other.

Surprisingly, no one crashed. There were some near misses though - in particular during that famous right hand bend a Dulwich Paragon rider swerved and gave everyone the jitters.
I don't know who won - maybe Charlotte from London Dynamo, maybe Jeanette from Team Luciano - it was too dark for me to see much more than 3 meters ahead.

Only at the end of the race did people seem to come alive and talk about the experience. "What a nightmare race", "I've never seen anything like it," "I won't be doing that again in a hurry."
To the menfolk it must have made very interesting viewing seeing all these girls with hair and kit pasted to their skin. A wet T-shirt competition would have been a great way to round off the evening !
Instead, we all just dashed into the shower rooms.

I didn't win the race. I don't even know if I scored any points. But I'd won the battle of the elements. I started the race and I finished it. I wasn't put off by the rain - not the easiest thing to do when it's all too tempting to pack up and go home. Now I know that I will be able to cope with another soggy one in the future. Bring it on - just not for a wee while yet though !

(photos by John Mullineaux)