Since the date was announced a few months ago, I have been waiting in anticipation for the Aberdeen round of series. Along Union Street for weeks have been banners stating that "Aberdeen Welcomes the Tour Series" but now the day was here.
I rode from my flat down to the train station at Union Square to pick up my mate Nico before riding back there, dumping our stuff, having breakfast and getting changed as we rode down to the circuit.
We arrived around 11ish, so about two and half hours prior to my race, where I did the normal thing - such as signing on, chatting to teammates, looking at any changes there had been to the circuit, etc.
As a team, we were fortunate enough to have five riders in the Cat 3/4 race, with the hope of having at least one on the podium at the end of the race. The plan for me anyway was to try to cover moves in order for our better crit riders/sprinters to expend less energy.
By the time we were allowed on to the circuit I was feeling good sensations from the legs, something you can never really quantify until you've warmed up. We rode up to the start line with the barriers and sponsor hoardings basking in the sun; I, unfortunately, had found myself near the back of the 45 man field, which is never a good place to be at the start of a relatively technical criterium.
The start was awful, I was clipped in quick enough and ready to go, however there was three riders directly in front of me that couldn't get the shoes clipped in to the cleat mechanism properly which cost me around 10-15 seconds on the leaders, right from the start line.
After that faux pas, I was steadily able to move up the field catching up to, passing and dropping groups every half lap or so until I was in sight of one of the Synergy RT guys I knew. I was able to close the gap to within 10 meters at one stage, however I was just short of catching back on to his wheel. Annoying it was, when he formed a group of 8 the next lap that I was never able to catch on to.
A Deeside Thistle rider and a Ythan rider had caught me after 15mins of this half hour criterium. At which point I realised that I had been caught be these two, I let out a loud, four letter expletive that started with the sixth letter of the alphabet. I then recovered after the hectic first half of the race, and let out a couple of attack here and there but could never really break the elastic between myself and the group I had found myself in, which had swelled in number to five.
With two laps to go, I heard the commentator say that "it looks like these guys will lapped here on the final lap" as we crossed the start/finish line. In hindsight, he was talking about the group of 12 behind up that were only 8 secs ahead of the leaders. However, I went round the first corner and put in an attack, which was brought back as we heard the bell. I went in to final sprint, with a lot of places to make up as I was last in our group, I caught one rider right on the line and picked up 26th, 1'40" down on the winner, Alan Smith (Ythan CC).
The rest of the team had much better fortunes, with Aaron picking up 3rd as well as a 7th and 8th for Calum and Joel, and an 18th for Sam in the first chasing group. I was pleased with how my legs were feeling and the fact that I had the pace but just needed slightly better fortunes in the first lap in order to help the guys out front and pick up a better place for myself but it wasn't to be.
Thanks to Calum Baxter for making this video and for his photography for us during the race, you can check his work out here: https://www.calumbaxterphotography.com/
Rest of the Stats: https://www.strava.com/activities/1577796461
I rode from my flat down to the train station at Union Square to pick up my mate Nico before riding back there, dumping our stuff, having breakfast and getting changed as we rode down to the circuit.
We arrived around 11ish, so about two and half hours prior to my race, where I did the normal thing - such as signing on, chatting to teammates, looking at any changes there had been to the circuit, etc.
As a team, we were fortunate enough to have five riders in the Cat 3/4 race, with the hope of having at least one on the podium at the end of the race. The plan for me anyway was to try to cover moves in order for our better crit riders/sprinters to expend less energy.
By the time we were allowed on to the circuit I was feeling good sensations from the legs, something you can never really quantify until you've warmed up. We rode up to the start line with the barriers and sponsor hoardings basking in the sun; I, unfortunately, had found myself near the back of the 45 man field, which is never a good place to be at the start of a relatively technical criterium.
The start was awful, I was clipped in quick enough and ready to go, however there was three riders directly in front of me that couldn't get the shoes clipped in to the cleat mechanism properly which cost me around 10-15 seconds on the leaders, right from the start line.
After that faux pas, I was steadily able to move up the field catching up to, passing and dropping groups every half lap or so until I was in sight of one of the Synergy RT guys I knew. I was able to close the gap to within 10 meters at one stage, however I was just short of catching back on to his wheel. Annoying it was, when he formed a group of 8 the next lap that I was never able to catch on to.
A Deeside Thistle rider and a Ythan rider had caught me after 15mins of this half hour criterium. At which point I realised that I had been caught be these two, I let out a loud, four letter expletive that started with the sixth letter of the alphabet. I then recovered after the hectic first half of the race, and let out a couple of attack here and there but could never really break the elastic between myself and the group I had found myself in, which had swelled in number to five.
With two laps to go, I heard the commentator say that "it looks like these guys will lapped here on the final lap" as we crossed the start/finish line. In hindsight, he was talking about the group of 12 behind up that were only 8 secs ahead of the leaders. However, I went round the first corner and put in an attack, which was brought back as we heard the bell. I went in to final sprint, with a lot of places to make up as I was last in our group, I caught one rider right on the line and picked up 26th, 1'40" down on the winner, Alan Smith (Ythan CC).
The rest of the team had much better fortunes, with Aaron picking up 3rd as well as a 7th and 8th for Calum and Joel, and an 18th for Sam in the first chasing group. I was pleased with how my legs were feeling and the fact that I had the pace but just needed slightly better fortunes in the first lap in order to help the guys out front and pick up a better place for myself but it wasn't to be.
Thanks to Calum Baxter for making this video and for his photography for us during the race, you can check his work out here: https://www.calumbaxterphotography.com/
Stats for Nerds
In terms of power, all the numbers were bang on. I didn't hit any new PBs except possibly a new best 15 second power. However, my Normalised Power was 250w - which is 4.8w/kg - numbers I've never really hit before - albeit my average was only 219w, which explains the stop-start nature of criterium racing.Rest of the Stats: https://www.strava.com/activities/1577796461
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