Lakeland CC road race 1 Wed 16th April @ 7pm Enniskillen. 23miles

I went up home for the race as training for Triathlon season, 55 riders took part in the opening road race of the season for the Lakeland CC club, they run a road race, time trial and hill climb leagues on Wed evenings from April to Sept. The race is time handicapped to allow riders of all abilities a chance of winning. On the night there was three groups, the first group of 15 riders containing many first timers and was giving a 3min start over the middle group of around 30riders who had 2mins over the scratch group of ten riders.
I was put in the middle group based on my time in the Paddy’s day time trial. The Race leaves Enniskillen then heads out towards Kinawley then onto Derrlyin then turns back to Arney, the first group headed off and 3 mins later my group was away and we quickly got up speed, the main work was being done by around 6 riders with the rest of the bunch sitting in and getting dragged along, I did more than my fair share of pulls over the first 5miles as I was determined to get a good workout and my position wasn’t as important as my work load, after Kinawley there is few short hills and we caught the first group, at this point I was on front and pulled the middle group up the hill and down to the turn point, a couple of riders jumped across to our group from the lead group, After the turn point we had a strong tailwind and the pace increase until we were caught by the scratch then it really heated up, the scratch had several riders from Omagh CC who were mad to get away on a break they continued to fire riders up the road on attacks one after the other until finally Brian Mininagh got away with 3miles to go and was join by Kenny Boylan (Lakeland CC) these two stayed away and got first and second respectively, the rest of the bunch was chasing hard and was only 5sec of at the end, I grabbed 4th in a fast downhill sprint giving me 6th overall, I was happy with this but lacked the sprint power I used to have as a cyclist, whilst training for Triathlon I hadn’t done any sprint work in my winter training, I had down all steady time trial work instead, plus am now 65kgs and previously was 69kgs when cycling so I lacked power. Club road racing like this is great for developing your cycling and makes a great speed work session plus its also great fun. I am now joining North Tipp wheelers to get some evening and weekend racing. I would recommend road racing to anyone who is looking to sharpen up the bike leg in Triathlon and remember how important it is because it represents the largest part of time in any triathlon. So go out there and find a local club and see can you compete with the cyclists, Even if you can’t match them you will find you will blast a lot of tri athletes come race day.