Race Day 13: Shrewsbury Circuit Race Series

Hello everybody, it's time to get stuck into my race report again but firstly I'd like to just mention that, at the moment, this blog is running on race reports. But I'd like it to be more than that, during the summer when I'm off school I'll try to make it less of a race report blog, but a 2 time a week blog like it used to be! Just putting that out there!

So last Friday I travelled to the UK as part of a Junior Irish team for 2 races, in England Saturday and Wales Sunday. We left Fermoy at 11am-ish and met the rest of the team in Dublin. The plan was to relax that night and when we arrived in Wales, we went to Ryan Mullen's house (Another member of the Junior Squad) where he and his Dad had a spread of sandwiches and other finger food for us all to munch. Cheers for that Lad's! So after chilling out there for a while we left our bikes with him and headed for our B&B/Hotel that was only down the road and got set up for the coming nights.

When I woke on Saturday morning, I had a very pleasant surprise of rain! A thing that has managed to stay away for weeks on end. This was of course a pain in the arse but we had to get on with things. We had our breakfast packed our race bags and got going for Shrewsbury which was roughly and hour and a half away in a car, but it took us about 2.30hrs in the bus. Happy days! When we arrived in Shrewsbury we got our bikes off the roof, signed-on and watched some racing for an hour or so before getting prepared for our own race. Ironically I got my lucky number 13 for the race and until I while ago I never realised it was my 13th race of the season as well! Coincidence? The facilities at the race were unbelievable, changing rooms, showers the lot. Compared to the set-up here it didn't even compare!
After watching a bit of the racing we eventually went to get ready and got our kit (SS Jersey, LS Jersey, Gilet and Shorts) and the team talk. We then went out on the circuit for a few warm-up/test laps as the surface on the circuit was wet, we had to have a few runs at it and pick some lines for the U-turns. The circuit itself was 1km in length and in the shape of an L with 2 hairpins, one being a lot dodgier than the other. Although there was only 2 really big corners there was also a few minor ones which made things hard when you wanted to move up. When the race got going it was pretty fast for the first lap or two then we started to dominate the race. Every break-away that existed we had a man or two on it, and the guys who weren't on the breaks sat near the front and marked everything in the bunch. I'm not going to add too much more detail as I could be here all night. Cormac Clarke won the race in a close up sprint, Caelan Murphy was 5th, I was 7th, Ryan O'Donovan was also inside the top 10 and finally Shaun Rigley finished at the back of the bunch after his strong ride in the break for 13 laps! Overall, it was a good race, Dan was happy, we were all happy and we got a bit of prize money! Some Pics:

Cormac Clarke wins!

Sunday, what. a. disaster! We got word on Saturday night after dinner that Stena Line had cancelled their 5.30pm fast ferry from crossing as the weather was bad and transferred us to the 2.10pm Irish Ferries slow boat instead. This meant the race was very doubtful on Sunday as the next crossing was at 2.30am Monday morning, which was impossible for some of the guys who had work. So none of us knew what was happening all night and for a good while the next morning! All we kept hearing was, "Ye are riding the first hour and going up the road".. which honestly didn't sound good to me, but we were just following orders! So when we got to the Mullen's house to collect our bikes we decided we better head down to the race HQ and apologise and pay the entry fee then leave. Luckily enough it was only 45mins away! As we got closer to Holyhead the weather was progressively getting better and the sun was shining at Holyhead! Couldn't believe it! So waiting for the boat we did what all good cyclists do, had a McDonalds and Ben & Jerrys Cookie Dough. All before 1pm! Some cyclists we are! I think we all know what happened then, we got on the boat, blah, blah, blah. Travel, travel, travel don't want to bore ye any longer.

Ken enjoying my tunes!

So that was a brief enough report of last weekend. Good experience overall, and we have our 100% record in the UK for 2011! One race, One win! Some very good news to announce over the next few weeks so.. Stay tuned!

Eoin