Sunny Wally Gimber

The 50th Anniversary of the Wally Gimber Road Race, organised by Dulwich Paragon was held in glorious spring sunshine near Tenterden in Kent today.

After a long delay waiting for the race ambulance we eventually set off, and mindful of my poor positioning last weekend I made much more of an effort to stay near the front. This however was not always easy with far too many riders willing to risk it all by crossing the white line to move up. This is proving to be a real problem now, with the Premier Calender Bikleline race cancelled this weekend due to riders across the road.

Four riders got away early on the first lap, Rob Enslin, Alex Higham, Simon Mcnamara and a chap from London Dynamo who I did not recognise. Later on the same lap I decided to mix it up a bit and attacked, with six or seven riders to form a chase group. We rode very strongly for two laps, and were surprised it was taking so long to reel the early attackers in. Eventually two riders appeared out of the back of the front group, so we continued to chase Rob Enslin and Alex Higham who were still up the road.

At some point a few riders bridged across to our chase group, but as the numbers swelled the quality of riding and effort seemed to deteriorate with several missing turns and sitting in. We caught the two leaders with two or three laps to go, and the riding in the break got even worse, with many (including myself) nervous the bunch would take advantage and close the gap.

On the second to last lap a few more riders bridged to our group, including Rob Hurd, a three time winner of the Wally Gimber. On the last lap, getting frustrated with so much negative riding I decided to go solo, but it was slightly foolhardy being a long way out from the finish, but I thought that maybe as a bit of an unknown I might be given a bit of rope. After a few minutes being “Hung out” I was caught, so set about recovering for the finale.

With a few kilometres to go to the bottom of the climb near the finish, Rob Hurd made a solo break and got away. Up the final climb I made one last do or die effort and got a small gap along with two or three other riders. Unlike previous years the finish was not on the hill but a couple of kilometres along the flat off the top. Digging deep to hold the small gap didn’t quite pay off, and the break reformed with only Rob Hurd still solo in front. Winding into the sprint the legs were paying for the two efforts on the final lap so I settled for 13th place, at the back of the break.

So all in all, a good day at the races, with some good lessons in racing at elite level. The first is that I have the legs to compete at that level, and can now back myself more to get away. I also learned that the optimum time to strike solo was not as early as I went, and it needs to be a more committed effort.

For those interested in race stats, this is the tale of the data: 127km, 3hrs 7mins, 40.6kph av, 71.5kph max, 166bpm av hr, 191bpm max hr, 279 av watts, 321 norm watts, 1145 max watts