Newbridge GP

Harrybelafonte

No thread for this. Did anyone do it?

My third year to mess it up and get dropped. Haven't been properly dropped in a race for an age now but after spending the first lap up the front, the tiresome dangerous stuff started. Some guy nearly took me out on a corner trying to push back in, bunch of saps riding into on oming cars etc. was too tired mentally for it so let myself drift to the back. It's not a course where you can get away with that. So I ended up off the back, almost always with the bunch in sight but still. Anyway, crash in A4 and A3 with under 1km to go. Usual thing in both races with lads slamming on so they could jump for a sprint.

A3 was huge again but A4 bunch was relatively small again. Which I'm beginning to see more of this year. Are numbers dwindling?

dermabrasion

I wonder did many 2014 A4's apply and take the upgrade?

wirelessdude01

Harrybelafonte wrote: »

t A4 bunch was relatively small again. Which I'm beginning to see more of this year. Are numbers dwindling?

I thought the numbers signed on for A4 race in Clonard the previous day were pretty big. Would have said about 90-100. I know even in my own club there are quite a few registered A3 racers would for various reasons haven't raced this season so far.

Harrybelafonte

Yeah, Flanagan was big too, but I thought Mick Lally was small, Traders was small and yesterday was small? Maybe it's all in my mind. THere's not much newbie race discussion on Boards.ie this year either, so...

dermabrasion

There is not much discussion about any racing.
Traders was small, but I thought the weather put a lot off. Thats my only venture so far. But, smaller fields are safer.

Beasty

Harrybelafonte wrote: »

A3 was huge again but A4 bunch was relatively small again. Which I'm beginning to see more of this year. Are numbers dwindling?

Been wondering this myself based on reports here. I suspect the last couple of years saw larger influxes of newbies and as a result fields were possibly hitting all time highs. Maybe some riders are acknowledging a bit more the potential dangers and steering clear early season.

maloner

Did the A3 race and was just ahead of the crash and not that far ahead from the sounds of it. A club mate came down in it but appeared to be in one piece afterwards.

Didn't think the break would be brought back and was surprised when it all came back together.

It was a big bunch, and while it was sketchy at times, I thought it was well enough behaved. I like the course despite some narrow enough roads.

Harrybelafonte

maloner wrote: »

Did the A3 race and was just ahead of the crash and not that far ahead from the sounds of it. A club mate came down in it but appeared to be in one piece afterwards.

Didn't think the break would be brought back and was surprised when it all came back together.

It was a big bunch, and while it was sketchy at times, I thought it was well enough behaved. I like the course despite some narrow enough roads.

Just to be clear, A4 was well behaved overall. The breaches where only from a small number. I just wasn't mentally up for it. It's a good course cos it varies, flats, ascents, drags etc. kind of has it all. Why I chose it over clonard.

nilhg

I rode the A4 yesterday have a small bit about my experience in the tell us about your cycle today thread so won't repeat here. It was my first open race and to be fair found the rider behavior mostly to be OK, a small bit of rushing up the outside and diving back in but once the pace went up there wasn't much of that, I only had one hairy moment when the rider in front of me braked a bit severely on a smooth patch of road coming down off Boston the first time and got well sideways, but he did manage to recover.

I live on the circuit and one thing that puzzles me both having watched from the sidelines over the years and taken part yesterday is why it starts at 12.30, on a Sunday in this area the really busy time on those roads is roughly from 12 noon to 5 in the evening, I know the logistics of starting earlier are problematical but if the first few laps were over before the traffic gets heavy it might be safer.

Quite a few yesterday on one day licences, I know that won't be possible after the end of the month but if fields are smaller maybe it might be worth looking at opening it up again later in the season when numbers traditionally fall off?

Beasty

Seems a lot of races on Sunday start early afternoon. Not sure there's that much logic other than giving riders who raced on Saturday a couple of extra hours recovery. The IVCA start their races at 9 which works absolutely fine (although their season does not kick off for a few weeks meaning there is little risk of ice). Their races are also usually a bit shorter meaning everyone can be heading home by 12.

smurphy29

Was in the crash in A3 yesterday. Happened right in front of me, normally these things happen in slow motion but I just remember seeing somebody do something stupid, I can't even remember exactly what it was, and then having no time whatsoever to react and hitting the deck. Very lucky to emerge with just road rash and soreness. Treated in the ambulance and was well looked after. Lucan put my bike on their car and brought it back to the car park. Thanks everyone!

Pity, because it was a fantastic race up to that point. Group up the road for most of the day and lots of attempts to form other groups to get across. Break mopped up with a few km to go after a hard chase in the last lap. Was just a bit further back thean I'd have liked - around P20-25 - but had my climbing legs with me so I was hoping to use that last pimple at the flamme rouge to get up to the top 10 for the final. Alas...

It's a great racing circuit, even if it's a bunch sprint there is no lucky winner on it because you have to be able to climb well over that final drag and then hold position to the line. That descent to the line is always sketchy though, but them's the breaks, if you go up you have to go down.

pprendeville

Did this with the A1s and 2s. Wasn't sure I'd survive long after lap 1 but the legs started to improve. As usual, a group went up the road from the off. Not sure how many. Usual big hitters in there. Then around lap 2 after the 1st hill I think a second group of around 10-15 riders got about a 20-30sec advantage. Lap 4 speed went up a lot and I was getting that lovely burning sensation in the thighs but it was bearable and that 2nd group on the road was brought back. One of the Velorevolution riders put in a few big attacks at this stage. Lap 5 and I was hurting big time. Then on a downhill my Garmin goes flying up into the air doing a jack in the box impression clearly. I had recently been warned by a UCD rider that he had been using a K-Edge and it had broke a few times. Apparently his K-Edge metal interface just broke. However in my case the 1/4 turn mount on the Garmin broke. Think it's due to the metal-plastic interface wearing away the 1/4 turn mount on the Garmin. K-Edge have since put in a plastic-plastic interface. I ignored the warning and paid the price yesterday with a lovely smashed screen and broken 1/4 turn mount. Don't think it got rolled over by the cavalcade at least so that's the only positive. Anyone got experience in repairing the screen or 1/4 turn mount of an Edge 800?

buffalo

Beasty wrote: »

Seems a lot of races on Sunday start early afternoon. Not sure there's that much logic other than giving riders who raced on Saturday a couple of extra hours recovery.

Gives people time to travel up from faraway places as well.

bellinter

maloner wrote: »

Did the A3 race and was just ahead of the crash and not that far ahead from the sounds of it. A club mate came down in it but appeared to be in one piece afterwards.

he still is.

Dont really know what happened. A couple of lads came down right in front of me and was nothing I could do only join them. Maybe someone did something stupid, maybe they didn't, maybe it was just bad luck... it was a huge bunch.

Thankfully doesn't appear to be any serious injurys caused... excpet to mine and a few others' wallets for repairs but I suppose we all know the risks! "What a STUPID sport" shouted the grounded Dub Wheeler, painfully, his Giant's handlebars bent in such a way that both the hoods were meeting at the stem. At that moment in time, as I stared at my broken helmet, it was very hard to argue with him.

Finally. Lucan team car; while all others drove by (not criticising them btw just saying it) the lads not only stopped and gathered up the damaged bikes, they brought me and the Cuchulainn lad back to the base. Greatly appreciated.

Highlight of the day; Cuchulainn's mam asked in the window if her boy was alright to which JS in the passenger seat replied "he's grand... I have his arm here!" Sound lads.

doozerie

I raced in A4 yesterday. It was my second race of the year, my first being the Annaclone GP 2 weeks ago. I was brought down in a crash during that, one of those baffling crashes on a straight stretch of road and which can perhaps only be explained by riders pushing beyond their limits to the point where they simply can’t steer their bikes straight any longer. I came away from that crash largely unscathed but determined not to just linger in the bunch for the next race and be brought down randomly again. I was never going to get back into that race but I chased hard anyway after the crash for the last lap, but still finished with something in my legs which is a very unsatisfying experience, another reason that I was determined to give it everything yesterday.

I raced the Newbridge GP last year, and another largely inexplicable crash in that one lingered in my mind too - straight road, up a hill, one rider swerved into the rider right in front of me and they both came down hard, I was lucky enough to be able to swerve around them. So I had something vaguely resembling a plan in mind going into the race, I was going to sit in for the first lap and bury myself at or near the front from lap 2 to hopefully keep ahead of any crashes as much as anything.

I always suffer at the start of a race, i seem to hover for ages on the mental boundary of “I can handle this/I *really* can’t handle this”. In club league races I usually go to the front early on to chip in there believing that it’ll either switch my legs completely on or blow me out the back. It’s usually the former, but I still hesitate to take that chance with open races, nerves get the better of me. It was my plan to sit in for the first lap yesterday anyway but the doubts about whether I should have just stayed at home in bed lingered longer than I’d hoped. With each surge I had to overcome the desire to just give up and drop out.

So I hit the second lap very uncertain about my aspirational plan to attack. But there was a lull at one point, I checked my heart rate and it was well below threshold, for those few minutes the race was even more casual than a club ride. That clinched it for me, I didn’t want to just get round the circuit, I wanted to feel like I’d really raced by the end. So I rode up the bunch, to see that there was a break of 2 riders up the road. I got to the front of the bunch, and briefly hesitated but decided that it was either all, or nothing, so I rode across to the break. I sprinted as best I could in order to get a gap from the bunch, but I’m not a sprinter so there was a wheel still on mine when I bridged. I didn’t look back to see if *every* wheel was still there, there was no point as it wasn’t going to change what I did next anyway.

I hoped I’d have time to recover before hitting the hill, but I made it to the break just as the road kicked up. Oh great! I decided feck it and rode around the two breakaway guys, at this stage I was mentally committed even if my legs weren’t. I didn’t get swamped, I didn’t blow up, so that was good. I reckoned things were coming together behind me, assuming they’d ever broken up in the first place, but I still didn’t look back. Heading towards the 3rd lap it was quite messy on the front. Some people rode through, some people rode up but not through, the pace wavered quite a bit. On the plus side I had a chance to recover, but on the downside we were clearly still a big group.

The pace dropped significantly again about a quarter of the way into the 3rd and last lap. I was still fired up so I rode to the front and stayed there for what felt like quite a while. Tactically speaking that’s suicide for someone like me, I really enjoyed that part of the race as I wasn’t having to watch every wheel in front of me, but I don’t have the pure power of many people so I’m never likely to win a race from the front. This wasn’t about winning though, not really, this was about enjoying the race and exorcising some of those crash demons.

I can’t actually recall whether it was on that second or third lap that I heard the crash behind me. It was on the very same hill as the crash that happened right in front of me last year. It didn’t sound like a big crash, it sounded like one or two riders plus carbon hitting tarmac but I really don’t know. I was just relieved to be ahead of it this year, it seemed to justify my decision to be near/at the front, although obviously bad luck can get you no matter where you are.

I had to dig deep on the last climb, I got swamped before we turned onto it but inevitably many riders stalled at various points on the climb. Also inevitably there was some dodgy bike handling by people who seemed to be trying to throw their bikes up the hill rather than ride up it. I managed to avoid quite a few wobbling wheels and got into the drastically reduced front group over the top of the climb. I didn’t know if we really had a gap. We were motoring by the time we had only 2 or 3km to go. The standard of riding decreased dramatically. Guys were diving up the outside and inside, trying to make gaps where they didn’t exist. I badly wanted out of there but I wasn’t willing to give up now and drop out but I was hemmed in too and couldn’t get to the front.

There had been some idiotic riding earlier in the race, guys going to the wrong side of the road and playing chicken with oncoming cars. I was getting hoarse from shouting, both to alert people to oncoming cars and to give out to people who seemed to think it okay to put themselves out there and then dive into the bunch when encountering cars. There were at least a couple of occasions where a huge pile-up seemed inevitable as people hauled on the brakes and swung left in the face of such diving riders. That was not a problem at the front, riders were quite happy to leave me there for long spells so I didn’t have to worry about anyone cuttting in front of me, but now that I was within the group again and the finish line was looming it was definitely a problem.

At about the 2km mark we were approaching a blind right-hand bend. I saw at least 2 guys ride up on the wrong side of the road, at speed. It was a sharp right turn, I reckoned there was no chance that they could safely merge with the fast moving group before clearing the bend, they were committed to staying out there all the way round. The only thing you can do in those circumstances is just hope there is no car coming the other way. But there was. I, and probably others, yelled “CAR!”, the outermost rider in the middle of the wrong lane seemed to take an age to react. He had two options, to either ride himself into the right-hand ditch, or to dive into the group. He chose the latter. He bounced off a rider in front of me. At this point I’d already stopped pedalling and was covering my brakes. If I’d slammed on going into the bend I’d likely have taken out both myself and anyone right behind and/or beside me. Both riders in front wibbled and wobbled and then they fell off. Hard. One guy went into the left-hand ditch, the other guy slammed into the tarmac right in front and a little to the left of me. All I could do was hope that he wouldn’t bounce right, into my path. He didn’t thankfully, so all I had to do was swerve a little to get round him.

The front of our group were up the road already, I chased after them but knew it was pointless. I really just wanted to rip my legs off, I might as well get as much exercise from the day as I could. I passed a few stragglers from the group, we were held up a bit by stragglers from A3 and there was no room to get past. I reckon I rolled over the line in something like 16th spot or so, well outside the points obviously but relieved to have stayed upright and also happy enough to have pushed myself hard during the race.

So basically, I worked really hard for zero points yesterday and came away very satisfied. I’ve no idea how satisfying it would feel to do zero work and get all the points, I’ll never find out and I don’t want to anyway. I enjoyed it, but I just wish that some riders would cop themselves on and stop creating dangers unnecessarily for the rest of us.

doozerie

...double post...

doozerie

On the topic of dangerous riding, I know there was a recent thread in which people complained about this topic being brought up again and again. I agree that it can get tiresome reading complaints, but I completely disagree that this issue should be left entirely to the commissaires to sort out.

The commissaires haven’t sorted it out yet, yesterday’s race was a glaring reminder to me of that yet again, and I believe they won’t sort it out any time soon. And arguably they can’t sort it out anyway. As I see it, the issue is that riders believe it is perfectly acceptable to ride on the wrong side of the road, into blind bends, into oncoming traffic, etc. Penalising someone is unlikely to alter their flawed mindset, in my opinion, they’ll just try harder to ride like that when there is no commissaire to see it.

I do believe they should be penalised too, incidentally, but I think it’s ultimately more useful and more important to educate them that such riding is not acceptable in the first place. And the only way I can see to achieve that is not just to yell at them in the moment (which is clearly needed too), but to bang on and on about the fact that it is not acceptable behaviour. If that seems like treating such riders like children, well yeah, it is.

In the same way that cyclists, pedestrians, and motorists seem only to happy to rewrite the rules of the road when it suits them (“Hey look, they are breaking the red light over there, clearly it’s okay for me to do it too”), I believe that people in races are less reluctant to do ride stupidly/dangerously if they believe the rest of the bunch will turn a blind eye. They need to be reminded that they can’t feel entitled to put the rest of us in danger like that. They should expect a bollocking for doing it, it needs to be seen as fundamentally unacceptable behaviour within the bunch, that won’t stop everyone from doing it but if it even stopped some of them then that is a step in the right direction.

That crash that occurred in front of me yesterday was nasty, and very unnecessary. It was the direct consequence of a stupid decision by one (of several) riders that rode up on the wrong side of the road when it was clearly extremely dangerous to do so. Not only did he pay the price but at least one other rider paid the price for his reckless riding too. We all have to bear in mind that our actions in a race have implications for others, not just ourselves, we have no right to endanger others by making reckless and dangerous choices.

So let’s continue to moan about it. Please!

el tel

doozerie wrote: »

...That crash that occurred in front of me yesterday was nasty, and very unnecessary. It was the direct consequence of a stupid decision by one (of several) riders that rode up on the wrong side of the road when it was clearly extremely dangerous to do so. Not only did he pay the price but at least one other rider paid the price for his reckless riding too. We all have to bear in mind that our actions in a race have implications for others, not just ourselves, we have no right to endanger others by making reckless and dangerous choices.

So let’s continue to moan about it. Please!

That guy, who caused that crash - there should be a mechanism to identify him to the commisaires and have him banned for a year.

Harrybelafonte

I was the one who started the lets stop complaining on here about it thread I think. But I wasn't arguing that we should ignore it.

I have memorised a number from yesterday and written it down. If I see him act the b&&&&&& again I'll report him. In fact, there's a whole club of riders I'd l

Beasty

If enough riders/marshals/spectators do make official complaints it may not result in any immediate action but could alert the authorities to look out for particular riders (or indeed clubs if it's a problem at that level)

Obviously riders can claim to have been wrongfully ID'd or that they were perhaps taking evasive action themselves but if a pattern emerges I am sure appropriate disciplinary action can follow.

doozerie

Harrybelafonte wrote: »

I was the one who started the lets stop complaining on here about it thread I think. But I wasn't arguing that we should ignore it.

To be fair I don't think anyone was arguing that the behaviour be ignored, but my fear is that by not being vocal in condemning it it'll just be conveniently interpreted as tacit approval by the habitual offenders.

That might seem like a ludicrous suggestion, that they'd see anything as approval for their reckless actions, but there seems to be a minority of people who routinely and casually ride incredibly dangerously so their social skills are very broken to start with so the usual rules really don't seem to apply to them.

doozerie

el tel wrote: »

That guy, who caused that crash - there should be a mechanism to identify him to the commisaires and have him banned for a year.

I agree. Unfortunately I don't know his number and I'd even have to guess at his club too. I know one of the colours in his jersey but that colour is used by other clubs too and I could easily guess wrong. Worse still, I think the guy he brought down had a similar jersey so I might even identify the wrong guy from the two of them.

He certainly knows who he is though, and if by some chance he is reading this while nursing his wounds and blaming his "misfortune" on some kind of bad luck, then it's time for him to acknowledge the fact that this wasn't an accident by any definition of that word that I can think of. If/when he comes back to racing, only that acknowledgement to himself will prevent him from doing the same thing again, I reckon.

The Tourmelatour

I raced the A4 race also. Fortunately I was ahead of the spill on the descent on the last lap. I did see a rider cane it down the descent on the wrong side of the road as he tried to gain an advantage by cutting up the group on the descent. It was at a blind turn when a car approached, forcing the rider into the fast moving bunch. He very narrowly missed the car but still - from the above reports - caused carnage.

Without doubt those dangerous riders should be reported to the commissaries. I didn't get any race number (as I had crushed him on the hill) but if I did I'd be straight up to the rider and the commissarie to complain. It's amateur racing, yet some lads think they can put other peoples welfare at risk to eek out a minor advantage simply because they're too goddamn slow to make an impact in a race within the rules. These types of riders are muppets and if anyone got a race number do the honourable thing and give it to the commissaires.

An excellent race, ruined for an unfortunate few by one or two fools who can't race.

Arthurdaly

I was pretty close to the crash in the A3 race yesterday. What happened was a rider coming up on the extreme right of the bunch where there was no room to move up. He was nearly in the grass and lost control of the bike, he wobbled into the guy on the left who then came shoulder to shoulder with the guy on his left. Guy in middle comes down first I think and takes down the riders behind.

That was a huge A3 bunch yesterday and was still a decent sized bunch at the finish which I think contributes to these situations. Normally on that course you wouldn't have a big bunch like that at the finish but there are no major selections due to the sheer size of the bunch. It was lining out towards the top of Dunmurry but most were getting back on the descent.

Surely there is a major problem with A3, juniors mopping up all the points, your average strong A3 not getting out of the cat due to this and numbers ballooning. It's the most active cat now.

Personally I don't buy the attitude of if you can't beat the juniors then you shouldn't get up to A2. At the very least I think juniors in development squads should not be riding at A3 level.