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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.
Danny
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Cycling
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Unicycling
Juggling
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