Josh and Spencer at the
High On Bikes Clieves Hill Road Race
Sunday 5th August
A tough day of racing saw a deserved winner in Gareth McGuinness (Energy Cycles) win the well-supported High On Bikes Clieves Hill Road Race. Cloudy conditions prevailed, but the rain mostly held off making for a fast pursuit around the Clieves Hill road race course. This race course had not been used for 12 years, so there was a lot of anticipation of how the event would run.
Southport CC was represented by myself and Spencer Coltman. The race was 14 laps of a 4 mile circuit, making a total race distance of 56 miles. The race headquarters was only a 0.5 mile ride away from my house - the closest race HQ so far! The pre-race briefing consisted of the normal safety information, but, it was good to see the huge turnout of marshalls & police who made sure the event ran safely on roads that were either not very wide or had very fast traffic on. After signing on and a short warm-up ride around Aughton, it was time to race!
Like any other race, right from the start of the race, there was attack after attack with quite a few riders trying their luck to establish a break away during the early stages of the race. Most of the attacks were chased down and easily caught. However, one break-away group managed to stay clear of the main bunch. Unfortunately neither myself or Spencer were in the breakaway. As soon as we realised that we could not catch the break away, the pace dropped a little. The course consisted of a hard incline up Formby Lane followed by a left turn up a deceiving uphill drag along Fir Tree Lane. After descending Shepherd's Lane at 45mph, the route took us through the thin country roads back onto Formby Lane. The pace was more or less full out for the majority of the race with little time to recover.
As a result, with 1 lap to go, Spencer told me he wasn't feeling too good, but, he would give me a lead out up the steep finishing climb of Clieves Hill Lane. At this point, it started raining. With nobody wanting to take up the front, one rider rode on the front of the group up to the sharp left hand turn onto Formby Lane. At this point, another rider attacked. Sadly, he didn't take into account the slippery roads, so, he inevitably crashed; luckily taking nobody else down with him. With only 1 climb between us and the finish line, I got myself on Spencer's wheel. Spencer remained near the front of the group. Fellow junior rider Will Thomas from Velocity Race Team started the sprint, I attacked and got onto his wheel but sadly did not have the energy left to kick past him.
So, I finished 17th out of 41 starters (28 riders finished the race), with Spencer finishing in 23rd position. My Garmin showed that I had covered 55.18 miles in 2 Hours 12 Minutes at an average speed of 25.1mph. After a quick rest, I was back on the bike in order to ride the short distance back to race headquarters. Have to say that the High on Bikes did a great job in providing a lot of food & drink after the race - the best post-race buffet so far!
To add to this, High on Bikes did a free raffle with quite a lot of expensive items to be won. I ended up going home with bike cleaning stuff and a lot of energy gels & bars that will certainly come in handy for the rest of the racing season. High On Bikes deserve a lot of credit for this race as it was the most organised race I have ever been to! :-)
