Ras de Cymru

I'll keep it brief because I'm about to dash out for the ferry, but the Ras de Cymru starts tomorrow and there will be an Orwell team in it.

It isn't exactly our first choice team as almost every rider I asked was unavailable for one reason or another, but Pat O'Brien was first choice on the list, and has the potential to do really well this week.

I was supposed to be managing the team but due to our rider shortage I find that my third Open race of the year is going to be a 5 day international stage race. Yippee! Declan Quigley is also on the roster, as both manager and rider. He says he doesn't want to race, but he's still bringing his bike and kit anyway so we'll see...

Brian McArdle fills the final spot on the team. We're not sure if it was bravery or naivete that led him to answer the call, but this race should give him the chance to show off his climbing ability that he hasn't had on the Irish 4th cat circuit.

I'll try to keep updates coming as the week goes along, but obviously that depends on what free time we get.

Best of luck, lads!

Looking forward to the updates

Have a great tour - best of luck

Just to let you know that Orwell Wheelers scooped their first prize of the Ras de Cymru week when they finished a fine second in the Pub Quiz this evening.
In other news, the first stage time trial resulted in a steady start for the squad with Dave McLoughlin (74th_ pipping Pat O'Brien (75th) by two seconds for early club bragging rights with Brian McArdle finishing the very hilly 7.7km course in 88th position, not a bad effort considering it was his first ever time trial!
There may have been another Orwell rider in the test but he's confirmed he's definitely driving the team car tomorrow's stage, a 96.5km circuit race with six KOM primes on it.
On today's evidence the squad are confident the hill will worthy of its designation...

Stage 2 done and all of the Orwell's are still alive and well. Today's stage was a Stamullen like circuit with two small to medium hills each lap, and there was plenty of suffering to go around.

Patrick had a super ride, rarely outside of the top 20, until the final climb when he rolled in middle of the bunch. It was good enough to move him up 20 places on GC, but more importantly he's begining to look forward to the properly mountainous stages.

As for myself I rolled in just off the back of the bunch to keep my 74th place on GC. As we were driving back to the digs I tried to think back to the last road race I finished, and I actually couldn't remember when that was! The realisation has dawned on me that today's stage may have been my first road race finish since about 2009, so progress is being made.

Brian continued with his spiralling learning curve, surviving 2 laps of 6 before getting burnt off by the speed of the bunch on the tailwind stretches. It's all experience though, and now he knows what a lineout is!

Tomorrow is the big day, with a 96km mountain stage in the morning with three ascents of the one climb, followed by a 17km TTT in the afternoon. The race is likely to be shredded in the morning as the skinnier riders look to do some damage while a lot of others will be trying to save their legs for the TTT. Pat has every intention of causing some destruction on the climbs, and we've told Brian that if he survives the morning to help us on the TTT he'll be allowed have a beer tomorrow night. We really have no idea how things will work out, but expect the GC to be completely jumbled by tomorrow evening.

Anyway, spirits are still high in the camp, and everyone's looking forward to the next couple of days.

Ras de Cymru Day 3

Following two moderately difficult stages we faced into a split stage today. The headquarters were located in Brecon for stage 3 - a 95km hilly stage, followed by stage 4 – a 17.5km Team Time Trial. Although we showed up with sparkling bikes after a clean up yesterday, there were heavy downpours throughout the day that dulled the bikes and the riders once again.

Stage 3 had 3 laps over a monster climb, hitting 18% over about 3km. On lap 1 everyone blasted over it, and many riders were launched out the back! It was horrific and I blew up but recovered quickly on the descent to make it across to the lead bunch. A fast narrow descent took us onto a main road with a tail wind where the bunch lined out at over 80km/h for 5 minutes. Wheels were quickly dropped and big gaps opened and when the pace finally eased the race was split into 3 bunches, which is how it stayed for the remaining two laps. Both Brian and Dave were on the wrong side when the bunch split and I narrowly made it into the lead bunch of 50 riders.

We managed to get in a good recovery before the TTT and arrived in on the lower half of the result sheet but were disappointed to be beaten by out nearest team rivals Abergavenny CC.

Declan is doing super work as team manager and we have sparkling bikes and clean gear ahead of tomorrow. The team is having a great time and spirits ahead are high before Stage 5... ahem.. BBQ!

On the results scene we are currently in the hunt for a podium position for the slow bicycle race event. But competition is high for this and we’ll see what happens next!

Good stuff lads, sounds like a rough race!

Fair play lads - looks like a tough race. I want to see you boys in the top results tomorrow. Dish out some pain!

Quick update from the bar opposite the terminal in Holyhead. (classy joint).
The boys all got round today's 80km final stage without any drama. Most of the stage was fairly flat (by Welsh standards - super hilly in reality). Anyway, it finished with a thoroughly horrific looking 7km legbreaker mountain top finish and Brian rode an absolute stormer to finish first of the Orwells in thirty somethingth place. Pat was next up with Dave close behind. No results, unfortunately, because we had to dash off immediately after the stage so we'd have enough time for pints in Ireland's favourite ferry port...
Suffice it to say, the boys all rode brilliantly all week and only got stronger as the week went on. It's a great race, very well run and we were made to feel very welcome. I'd thoroughly recommend it to anyone thinking of riding it next year. I'll get the boys to do their reports presently. Best sign off as a very drunk woman has just landed on top me. As I say, classy joint...

Back to Normality after the best 5 days I've ever spent on a bike. The legs are recovering already!

This event was thoroughly enjoyable and we were well looked after by our Welsh neighbours. The roads were very hilly, smooth, fast and at times very technical, perfect for racing on. To make matters better the team had no mechanical failures, punctures or crashes.

A big thank you to Dave Mc for all the advice and many words of wisdom. I thought I knew about stage racing after Ras Dún na nGall but it turns out there was much more to learn.

Thanks also to our manager Declan Quigley who took care of everything for us, made life easy, and without him this race would have been impossible to complete. He was more tired than the riders on the journey home!

Biggest congratulations to Brian McArdle who despite a rough start, never lost faith and used everything he learned every day to build himself up to an impressive last day, where he disappeared up the final mountain! He well and truly answered the call where many would have cracked. Watch this space!

Well that was tough but fun. It's a long time since I've ridden a race like that, and after 5 hard days I've spent today scraping myself through work and feeling like I've been hit by a bus.

The racing was brilliant, the roads were fantastic, always going up, down or sideways, not a single pothole for the first four days, and the organisation was generally excellent as well.

The team got on great too, with a constantly good atmosphere no matter how tired people got. Declan deserves heaps of credit for this, because he spent the week running around making sure we had everything that we needed before we knew that we needed it. All we had to do for ourselves was eat, sleep and race, which made a massive difference to us on the tougher days.

Patrick continued his steady improvement here, and while this was a big step up from the likes of Kanturk or Donegal he rode smartly all week, rarely slipping outside of the top 20 on the road race stages, and after this I'd have to consider him a certainty to make his debut in the Rás Tailltean next year.

Revelation of the week was Brian- he was only called in after all of the likely candidates turned down the offer of a spot, and I had told him not to worry about finishing, just to ride the best he could each day and see what happened. I began to worry for him after stage 2 when he finished 18 minutes down, and I didn't feel any better when his only goal for stage three was to keep up with the girl who dropped him in the tailwind section the previous day! He got steadily better every day from there though, while the rest of the bunch were wearing down, with his bunch positioning and wheel holding improving immeasurably.

Stage 5 and both Brian and I found ourselves blown out of the line-outs between the first two KOHs, and with 70k to go it looked like being another rough day. We got a group working together fairly quickly, with Brian apparently seeing nothing unusual in him being the one to bully and harass a mainly 1st and 2nd cat bunch into all doing their share of the work, and not hesitating to jump into gaps anytime wheels were let go or the line broke down. By the end of the stage Brian was one of a handful of riders who had dragged our group around the course, and we ended up less than five minutes down on the bunch. I still wonder if they'd have done what he was telling them so readily though if they knew it was only his 4th or 5th race ever?

The morning of the final day and I knew he was feeling good when he told us that he wished there were a few more stages still to go! Let it suffice to say that he survived with the bunch until the foot of the final climb, before riding away from Pat and myself like we were stopped (we still don't know where he finished because final results aren't out yet, but he was within sight of the guy in the polka dot jersey, so that has to be a good thing). It's been great to watch his improvement over the week, because he seems to have learnt more in five days than most beginners do in an entire season, and I really can't wait to see where he can go from here.

Thanks to everyone who sent messages of encouragement, and of course we have to thank the club for subsidising the trip and Dave T. for supplying race food/drink and spares. When all the sums were done the trip cost us not much more than going to the 2 day in Mullingar would have, which made things a lot easier. This was one of the best races I've been to in years, and I can definitely see us putting in a team again next year, so hopefully we'll see a few more riders looking to race it then.

I have the final results at last- Patrick finished 39th on GC @11:08; I was 67th @28:11; and Brian finished 75th @43:09.

Before I forget, Declan is credited with 101st place, a remarkable achievement in a race with a 100 rider limit. His time is listed as 14:37/DNS/DNS/DNS/DNS/DNS/DNF, whatever the hell that means.

Brian wrote:

Don't leave your tube of chamois cream next to your tube of toothpaste. A mistake was very nearly made. Your balls might have that minty fresh taste, but chamois cream isn't great for getting rid of plaque.

Minty Balls!
Sounds like an episode of South Park.
And remember, the race isn't over until the drunk woman has fallen on you...

Great to read all the reports lads - thanks to all of you for taking the time to write such eloquent spiels!