Chas Messenger Trophy 3 Day Stage Race

Saturday 30th April 2005

Fancying some warmer weather me and Andy Windsor headed down south to ride the Chas Messenger 3 day as it’s always sunny down south.

Stage 1 – Hillingdon
Weather – Hot and Sunny
Always a good way to open races, a 64km crit. After missing the first break which came back we had to make sure we where in the next, Tony Gibb attacked with a recycling rider and Kev Dawson, thinking it looked dangerous I jumped after it. Looking under my arm I saw I had a rider with me so I held it at 35 mph up the long straight then flicked over unfortunately for me the rider was Urqhart who not only kept the pace but went a bit harder up the hill, by the time we bridged to Gibb I had exceeded what they call the threshold. Next 3 more recycling riders came across with Zak Carr to make 9. That made 2 mega testers, Gibb, Urqhart and 4 recycling’s this was going to be a right laugh with over an hour left. As several teams had missed out they got on the front chasing and despite the fact the only time we dropped below 30 mph was on the bends we where held at 30 seconds. It stayed this way all the way into the finish where we sprinted with me taking 5th. Andy came in the bunch! about 30 seconds down.

Stage 2 10km Time Trial
Weather – Hot and Sunny
Time Trials in races are damage limitation for me and when you have Dawson, Dangerfield and Carr in the field you have to nail yourself just to keep the time loss under 2 minutes. Carr won in 13 minutes and as there was no flat and 2 hard climbs that meant he averaged 30 mph which was impressive. Not much more to say as after it finished and everything calculated I was now in 10th on GC.

Stage 3 - 100 km
Weather – Very Hot and Sunny
I had decided to skulk around in the bunch and see if I could get away with doing nothing on this stage. All was going to plan until ½ way through the race a break went and no one reacted. It got to 50 seconds before the recycling’s and a few others chased, after 10 km of gutter riding the break was caught and another went with Lovett, Dangerfield, Urqhart and one other. Just then one of the recycling’s punctured and I decided to go on probably the hardest bit of the circuit with Higgins and 2 others, we caught the 4 after a few km and rode hard to build a 45 second gap. Then with about 3 km to go everyone stopped riding in the group and we only had 15 seconds in the last km, we stayed clear and with my Cipollini like sprinting abilities I got another 5th place, Andy finished in the bunch.

Stage 4 – 102km
Weather – Hot and Sunny
Not much to say on this stage except it was brutal, we had 2 little ring climbs each lap and by that I mean 39x19 and very little flat in the circuit which we had to go round 6 times. I got in a break with about 45km left behind the front 4 which was brought back and that pretty much finished my legs and day off. I rode the last 40km in the bunch eventually finishing 15th overall.

Conclusion
The weather is better down south and I am not quite up to 3 days racing after only starting racing 3 weeks ago.

Thanks to Andy Martin for this report

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