Junior Tour of the Mendips

Junior Tour of the Mendips; the first stage race in the National Junior Series, and my first stage race of the year and also my closest of the National Series races to home, being about 20 miles away. The whole family and I went down on the Saturday, leaving at about 7.30 to arrive about 8.30, in order to sign on, and warm up before my departing time of 11.05 for the prologue TT, a rolling 7.4km route running round the outside one of the Chew Valley lakes, and after a good warm up on the rollers, and then riding down to the start, a lay-by off the road, with my brother Tom who was going to take some pictures, and after popping a gel I was off, I wasn't 100% how to pace it as it's the longest prologue I've ever done, but shorter than any TT I've done, so I decided to just ride as hard as I could for the whole course and hope that I don't blow too early, after about 4km everything was going well, the legs were feeling good and I was pushing myself hard, and the time was looking good. The course then wound through a tiny village, where I encountered my first obstacle, a stopped lorry on the right hand side, and a stationary car in front of me, blocking the road, and in the split second I had to think, I just dived through the gap between them that was just about wide enough for my bars to fit through and the straight after this I came across another problem! There was a junction to the right hand side of the road that a stationary car on my side was waiting to turn into, and so took up the whole lane on my side, and all I could do at this point was hop onto the curb to the left and go round this gravelly corner on the pavement and pray I could stay upright, thankfully I did and after sprinting out of the corner and hopping off the curb I carried on having lost a few seconds with the whole situation.

But as they say, bad things come in three, and ahead of me I could see; a car, James Tillet (who'd left a minute ahead of me), and the main problem, a tractor taking up most of the road, with cars flowing the other way, leaving no room for either of us, so I came round the first car, and had to sit there with James, for another few seconds, before managing to get a clear run on the other side of the road, and taking it, sprinting past this tractor, who I learnt shortly after, James had been stuck behind for the past 5ish kms, losing him any chance of a good time. After an eventful TT prologue, I still managed to come home 20th with a time of 10.51, and the winner's (Oscar Mingay) time being 10.28, so I was gutted considering my time could have been so much better had I had a clear run, but there you go.

The afternoon was set to be a 105km road race around a slightly rolling course, and the race would consist of a neutralised section to the laps, and then seven laps of the course, with the finish line being at flat section, so probably going to be a sprint, and so I was hoping that this stage would be the one I would do best in. We rolled out at 2 o'clock and the first 10km of the race was neutralised and then as soon as the car dropped the flag, the race was on and some early attacks tried their hand, but to no avail and after staying in the main group for the first 60ish km before attacking off the front, with two Spokes team riders up the road, so I just put my head down and chased them to bridge the gap to them, but as I was getting closer to them, one of the riders, obviously touched wheels with the other and came down hard at probably close to 50kmh and then when I rode past him, he wasn't moving which was quite scary. Soon after that though I caught the other Spokes rider, Stephen Dent, and we both started pulling turns, with a Hargroves rider, Harry Yateshaving bridging across to us soon after, and the three of just started working together, getting our lead over the peloton to over 30 seconds at one point, but next time we came around to the finish, all of the cars in the convoy ahead of us were slowing to a stop and telling us to stop, because apparently the Spokes rider who had crashed earlier still wasn't moving, and then the peloton stopped behind us, and the chief commisaire came to speak to the three of us, and because they'd had to neutralise the race, and according to his timing our break had 25 seconds on the main peloton, which was under 30 seconds, then we going to be restarted in the main bunch, effectively making all of work for the past 10km or so pointless, which had all of us very annoyed and frustrated, but the bigger issue on hand was the health and wellbeing of George Wharton, the rider who had crashed, who still hadn't moved.

After a restart, the race was together coming back to the finish line, and that was the point at which the organisers decided to black flag the race, finishing it there and then due to having emergency services on their way to tend to George, which was a very sensible decision on their part, so we all turned around and headed back to the HQ and that was the end of day one. Thankfully we later heard George had been released from hospital and had no serious long lasting injuries which was very good news to hear.

Day two was another early start, with sign on opening at 8.30 and dad and I went to drive up one of the hills which I hadn't ridden before, and it was very steep, hitting 20% at one point, and so I knew this was going to be a really tough day for me, being about the furthest from a climber, but after day one, I really wanted to try and do as well as possible today, so I knew all I needed to do was to try and hang in for the climbs and not get dropped. Over the course of the 85km race I was going to try and and waste as little energy as possible, so I sat in the bunch for the early part of the race just trying to conserve as much energy as I could knowing I'd need it soon. The first of the three major climbs wasn't too bad for me, being longer and less steep so I just stayed in the middle of the bunch for that getting over fine, and then soon after the top of the climb I tried my hand at an attack as I was thinking, if I could hit the second climb with a gap, then I could afford to take the climb at my own pace, and when I looked back, I had quite a substantial lead over the rest of the peloton, with two other riders off the front bridging across to me, being Charles Page of On-Form, and Anthony Anderson of Sigma Sport. The three of us tried our best to stay away, but we were obviously too big of a threat to the peloton, so they chased us down and soon enough we were back in the group, coming up the second climb.

I tried to get as close to the front of the group as possible before the base of the climb, so I could afford to lose some places if needed, and it turned out it was, I couldn't hold the wheel of the riders in front of me, and I kept slipping backwards, but still digging as deep as I physically could, managing to reach the summit at probably about 40 seconds behind the group ahead of me on the road. Thankfully at this point I was with about 7 others and we instantly started a chaingang as we knew we all needed to work together if we wanted to stand any chance of coming to the end in the front group, so we all put our heads down for the next 20ish minutes and just drilled it, until thankfully we managed to catch the front group on the road. Had there been even one less person in our small group, I don't know if we would have made it back on. Then we rode to the final climb as a whole group after many failed attacks, and I just hung in for the final 1.5kms uphill, and tried to sprint for the line, but I had absolutely nothing left, so I was absolutely chuffed that I had managed to come home with a 10th on the stage that suited me least, bringing me up to 13th place overall, which I am really pleased with. Dan Coombe for Backstedt came home with 16th overall and Matt Burke got 46th overall.