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OLYMPIANS & READERS ON HOW TO BEAT FIRST RACE NERVES
Cyclists across the spectrum, from the professionals to introductory 4th category riders, recall entering into the seemingly unforgiving world of racing for the first time
Olympic track gold medallist Dani Rowe described it as “a massive learning curve”. Current Scottish national road champion John Archibald says it was “wild”, with “lots of shouting abuse”. For one amateur rider it felt like “going over the top in WW1” while another rider says it was like “being bullied”.
All are describing their first race on a bike. There comes a time in the life of most cyclists when they wonder what it would be like to take part in a proper, organised race. After all, it looks so glamorous and exciting.
For most, it will remain a daydream and they will resume their training for their next sportive. But others will take the first steps towards becoming a fully fledged, officially licensed 4th category road racer. They will have to pin a number on their back, mull over marginal gains, stick out their elbows and learn all the other tactics associated with riding your bike in a high-intensity, highly competitive environment.
As well as putting in the hours of training and sacrificing time with family and friends, they will have to cope with the fear of crashes, mistakes and failure.
Pharmaceuticals company worker Peter McBride recalls being as “nervous as hell” on the day of his first race, the Noel Taggart Memorial GP open road race in Northern Ireland in 2015. A 41-year-old member of Banbridge CC, he was one of 80 riders who took to the line for the 58-mile race.
Advice overload
“I could hardly sleep the night before,” he says. “I had lots of riders texting me with advice like, ‘Hold the wheel’, ‘Don’t look down when getting your bidon’, ‘Never look behind if you hear a crash’ and ‘Don’t be scared to get your elbows out in the sprint’. With all this advice my head was swimming with information overload. I thought I was going over the top in WW1 rather than into a bike race. I thought I’d better give the wife and kids an extra kiss that morning when I left.”
McBride eventually finished with the main bunch and says “I felt as if I’d won the Tour de France”. He had started cycling to lose weight and took his place at the start weighing 76kg (compared to his previous 95kg).
Four years later, he has moved up to second category and says: “My advice would be to just go out and enjoy it. If you have trained hard enough, you will be fit enough for it. The most important tip would be to stay in the top 10 to 15 wheels. There’s less chance of crashing and you can always see the road ahead.”
Pro rider John Archibald, aged 28, has notched a series of eye-catching victories on the road (with Ribble Pro Cycling) and track (with HUUB Wattbike) this season, yet says his first race six years ago “wasn’t a gratifying experience”, despite winning it!
“I'd been riding my bike to work, chasing Strava segments and showing up to the occasional Glasgow Wheelers Sunday ride,” he recalls. “At some point I was convinced to enter a race, so I chose the 4th category Straiton Struggle in the west of Scotland. Despite having a good result, I really didn't enjoy myself. My dad – who’d also entered but couldn’t get a place – and I were both surprised at how wild road racing appeared to be. Being so naive in my expectations, I got a real shock. Having come from a swimming background where every race is a time trial and in an individual lane, I couldn't understand why everyone was racing so hard in the first five minutes of a two-hour race. There seemed to be lots of cutting each other up and shouting abuse. It generally wasn't a gratifying experience.”
Basic tactics
Despite this, Archibald says he learned a lot about key elements of successful road racing. “I learned the basics of aerodynamics. You can save incredible amounts of energy working with other riders, rather than chasing gaps on your own,” he says. “I also learned that no space was given or afforded by other riders, you had to ride tight to preserve your own space or progress forwards.”
“I could hardly sleep the night before, I had lots of riders texting me with advice such as, ‘Hold the wheel’, ‘Don’t look down when getting your bidon’, ‘Never look behind if you hear a crash’ and ‘Don’t be scared to get your elbows out in the sprint’
Despite now rivalling his sister, Olympic and world track champion Katie, for success on the bike, Archibald didn’t race again for two years until he joined the Pro Vision Scotland race team “and had teammates that could help me understand the basic tactics”.
His advice to anyone considering pinning on a race number is: “Be prepared, but prioritise enjoyment over anything else. Try a few local chain gangs and speak to experienced riders on group rides, then just get stuck in. Don't heap loads of pressure on yourself, just enter for the experience and see what comes from it. It may feel like a deep dive, but it could well spark the bug for you.”
For team pursuit Olympic gold medallist and world champion Dani Rowe, the lesson of her first ever race was a simple one of tactics. She was 14 and riding a closedcircuit race at Thruxton race track for her local Portsmouth club, I Team.
“One girl sat on my wheel for the whole race and I had no idea what she was doing,” says Rowe, who now runs her own coaching company (roweandking.com). “I rode the whole race going as hard as I could and when we reached the finish she sprinted past me and I was so upset
I moaned to everyone at the track. I just didn’t know the tactics of bike racing and had towed her around for the whole race and I was absolutely outraged. I didn’t know you were supposed to share the workload or at least have a bit of cat and mouse until the end.”
The experience was a huge learning curve, explains Rowe. “I made a massive error and I wasn’t going to do it again, that was one good thing. It certainly didn’t put me off.”
Don’t overthink it
For Olympian Oli Beckingsale – who represented Britain in mountain biking at three Olympic Games and now runs a bike shop and coaching company (bwcycling.co.uk) in Bristol – his first race was as a 14-year-old in his local cyclo-cross league in 1990. His training consisted of mountain biking with friends.
“We had two speeds, either steady chatting or flat-out racing. I was eighth out of around 30 riders, most of whom were older and bigger than me. I knew that I enjoyed it and wanted to do some more. I knew I was going to get stronger and faster. At that age I didn’t analyse my performance in any way and neither of my parents were cyclists, so there was no input into what was good or bad.”
“One girl sat on my wheel for the whole race and I had no idea what she was doing, I rode the whole race going hard as I could and when we reached the finish she sprinted past me. I was so upset I moaned to everyone at the track. I just didn’t know the tactics of bike racing”
His advice: “Don’t overthink it, get entered, get stuck in and do your best. Try different cycling disciplines and see which ones you prefer and are better at. I used to race MTB as a youth with Chris Hoy for example.”
To the casual observer, criterium racing – on a short street circuit full of tight bends, sometimes around a city centre – often looks as terrifying and chaotic as a hen or stag party in Blackpool. This was the environment 44-year-old business consultant Rod Leach decided to make his racing debut in. The Dunfermline CC member wasn’t new to competitive sport – he’d previously represented Britain at the 1994 Winter Olympics in the biathlon (cross country skiing and shooting) and Scotland in the steeplechase, but he still found himself racked with worry on the starting line.
“It was the ‘Crit on the Campus’ [at Stirling University] in 2017 and there were 60 riders, which seemed a huge amount for such a tight circuit,” he says. “There had been a few events on prior to mine with several crashes. I think being older than most of the young field meant I had more concerns about getting injured or damaging my bike, which was only two months old.”
The specific demands of criterium racing meant Leach found himself being “bullied” by more experienced riders. “Of course, looking back, it wasn’t bullying at all, it was just the jostling for position that happens in racing,” he says. “But I found the handlebars touching, people putting their hand on my back to let me know they were coming through, all a bit close, which was more down to my ability than anything else. But you quickly get used to that and start dishing it out yourself.”
For most of the race, adds Leach, he concentrated really hard on getting the corners right. “There was one in particular where I seemed to lose three or four places every lap as everyone else knew the racing line.”
Leach went on to finish 13th and says he learned a valuable lesson: “That the fastest and fittest don't always win, and saving energy and using your speed into corners is vital.”
Leach, who now races as a third category rider for Team Andrew Allen Architecture, offers this advice to those considering taking up racing: “You obviously need the fitness but tactics are more important. For your first race, though, forget tactics, pin the number on and have fun but be prepared for it to be harder than you thought it would be.”
Cautionary note
As amateurs, both Leach and McBride were shocked by the death of Lotto-Soudal rider Bjorg Lambrecht during this year’s Tour of Poland. His death, after an upraised reflective road stud is believed to have caused him to lose control and crash into a concrete pipe, was a reminder of the hazards of racing on public roads.
“I was thinking, ‘I’m doing this as a hobby and here’s a pro, one of the best up and coming talents, and he’s died
“Do not overthink it, get entered, get stuck in and do your best. Try different cycling disciplines and see which ones you prefer and are better at. I used to race MTB as a youth with Chris Hoy, for example”
“Interval training is essential to make sure you can keep up when the pace goes up and down. If you can’t sprint to hang on in a race, you’ll let the wheel go and let the gap open up and it’s goodbye. You’re not getting back in if that happens”
doing it’” says McBride. “It puts things into perspective. But once the race starts, I put those thoughts far from my mind and get on with the job at hand. You could just as easily be hit by a car on your commute to work. It’s always a thought when you go out the front door: ‘Will I be coming back in through it?’
“That said, it’s one of the reasons I attack so much in races and why I’m always near the front. It’s much safer.”
Though all the riders we spoke to – particularly those who took up racing in their 30s or 40s – were full of positives for the experience, there is a cautionary note from Sam Shaw, who raced for three years from the age of 31 and accumulated just a solitary point – “and a cheeky fiver!” – with a 10th place riding for Stirling Bike Club at the Gifford ‘B’
Race in East Lothian in 2013. Shaw, now 37 and a landscape architect with a wife and two young children, is full of praise for how racing improved his fitness, but says other elements were less attractive.
“Road racing doesn’t always have the friendliest of atmospheres. It’s a competition, we get that, but we’re also not pros, so acting as if a third/fourth category Scottish road race in April is the be-all-and-end-all got a bit wearing,” he says. “The constant commitment and worry that I wasn’t going to be good enough also became a burden. It was hard to keep comparing myself to people who worked less stringent hours or who had no kids.”
Shaw says he experienced double-edged guilt about either missing family time or spending time with his
family and missing out on training. But even though his riding these days is mainly for pleasure – “road and gravel with mates, racing to town signs” – he still remembers the valuable lesson that his first race taught him.
“Interval training is absolutely essential to make sure you can keep up when the pace goes up and down,” he says. “You often hear about the ‘concertina’ effect on TV commentary: if you can’t sprint to hang on in a race, you’ll let the wheel go and let the gap open up and you might as well say goodbye as you’re not getting back in if that happens.”