Is this it?

"Is this it?"

I don't know how much he could read of me through my mirrored glasses, but the question; the intonation; the eagerness for an affirmative must have given number 62, the powerful veteran in blue, all the context he needed.

"Yup". We were going away. Til the end.

It was the second time that day that I'd showed up somewhere uninvited and felt perfectly welcomed. It wasn't until late the previous evening that I'd realised that there was even a chance of a race. Initially intending to go out to Fenwick to support club mates Andy and Ray in the APR, I browsed over the Braveheart fund forums to check what groups they were in.

"Huh," I mused, deliberately, offhandedly towards Fiona; deliberately indeliberate. "There's only two reserves left.

"... I might take the CAAD."

With what I took to be at least a half-approving smile, "I knew you were going to say that" was the prescient answer.

Ray and Andy, having been on the reserves until the night before, had made other plans. Their loss was my gain, and I was put into group 3 of 4, with a time gap of 6 minutes on a 33 mile course.

Two laps around a fairly simple loop, the Fenwick APR would take us into the wind along the A77, before bringing us back on the lumpy Dodside road. I took a look through the profile, scanned through my memory of those roads, and picked the point at which the race would blow apart. I had barely an inkling then that I would be a part of what instigated such a detonation.

The spot was easy to pick - the climb up to White Loch - a spikey, on/off series of micro-climbs that raised us a hundred metres in about two miles. It was ideal parcours for me, and, on the second lap, was the obvious point at which chain-gang cooperation would cease to be in most riders' interest. Most of all, myself and number 62.

Though not exactly small, I had clocked the man in blue - a vet from L.A.B R.A.T CC called Hamish Maclean - as one to watch almost from the off. His form on the bike was just too good to ignore, and he confidently took control of his patch. Everything about him marked him out as a danger-man - not least his lack of a club showing. Like me, if he went away, he'd need to make it stick. There'd be no-one left in the pack to pick up the sprint for the team.

Also to watch were the boys in green - the VC Glasgow South lads. At the counterpart to this APR a fortnight ago - the Drumclog APR - their control of the group speed, drive to split the pack and subsequent train to the line had given them near total control over the race and earned them a rightful victory, demoting me to a cheeky third-place after holding their wheels to the final kilometre. Unlike last time, though, I failed to overhear their strategy as they discussed it at the head of the group. I would just have to watch for the signs, and play things by ear.

It was because I was marking the two most dangerous-looking VCGS lads at the front of the pack that I was in the right place to jump across to Hamish when he went. Dangerous as they were, they were too tired to make the jump themselves after allowing themselves to drive the head of the pack for a mile or two. Knowing my man, and that the game was afoot, I was away before they had time to wind back up again.

As alert as I had been to the players of the game, though, I was missing some vital information, and had picked up misinformation along the way. The second time along the A77, we had passed group after dropped group of starters from the first two time brackets, and the fastest of us made some attempt to drop our own group size to just the most capable by losing them among all the cracked. With a rotating group of about a dozen, I overheard that "that was the last of them." We were away and free.

I think both Hamish and I knew that that was wishful thinking. There was no way that we'd gone hard enough to get everybody within twenty-five miles. Sure enough, as pull came to push came to flying sprints in the breakaway, we began to pass riders.

To say we weren't hanging around would be an instance of litotes bordering on the ridiculous. We were caning it. As the gradient swooped upwards, it was possible to feel the saddle bending under you as the whole bike strained to change the direction of your momentum from forward to up. It was a rollercoaster without the safety harness and we were giving it everything.

One or two of the ones and twos that we passed grabbed on, number 11 - Gary Davidson of VC Astar Anderside - particularly coming to mind as helping us maintain speed. There was no choice. Here we were, riders without anybody in the bunch to control things, and no representatives of other, chasing clubs with us - we had no option but to stay away, and the bunch had no choice but to catch us.

As we turned toward the finish, though, there was a change in the group. Hamish and Gary were tiring, a number of other caught riders were fighting at the same speed, and it was getting too easy to pop off the front. The chase had gone out of the group, and they were preparing for the sprint.

So should I.

As I sat second wheel, it wasn't until the final mile that I realised the danger we were in. Not from behind - although the lethal-looking scratch group caught the remnants of group 3 at the base of the final climb - but from the front. A motorcycle outrider gave us the bad news.

"Thirty seconds".

What?

There were riders still out there. A whole bunch in front - mostly from group two, as it turned out. I had had no idea. And now we had no time to catch them.

I looked left, right, span my legs and looked for the response. Nothing. No-one was going anywhere. They weren't just holding back for the sprint. They were bushed.

Maybe so was I.

Thirty seconds would have been too much, surely, for any man to make up over that distance.

I should have gone anyway.

As the yellow flags came into view, Hamish went. Scott [Newman, Inverclyde Velo] went. I went.

In slow motion, I rolled past them, looking at nothing but those riders now dismounting on the shady roadside the other side of the line.

How many were there?

It was a sprint won at eighteen miles an hour, spinning exasperation past a field of exhausted legs.

It was a sprint for eighth.

It was enough for prize money - enough to recoup my entry fee - but it was hard not to feel that it was a waste of what, for me, was an almost ideal course.

Don't misunderstand me - it was a great race, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I mixed it up in my first breakaway, I maintained control and I won a sprint. With my monitoring of danger-men and successful positioning, I felt like in many ways I'd played the game, and won.

Sadly, though, that won't be what's written down, and unlike the hard men in the scratch group who have a string of palmares under them regardless of whether they catch the rest of us, it matters to me. It's probably already cost me races.

There are so few points scoring opportunities for a Cat 4 racer in Scotland - especially when I want to jump to Cat 3 by the British University Championships. My only shot this month was the Dunfermline road race, and I haven't gotten into that. My next shot might not come until May.

Cat 3 differentiates the would-be racers from the have-a-go racers. If you want to get into points-scoring races as a Cat 4 - best already have points. Or at least results.

I know that I'm good enough for Cat 3.

I need to be given a chance.

Photo courtesy Ian "LeesLang" (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianmh247/7011870259/) all rights reserved

How to ride a bike - the Gifford Road Race

One of the problems with being a human is that we're like a "vanilla" android phone - one without hundreds of preinstalled applications. Certainly, some of us look nice (some of us don't) innately, and we may have a greater or lesser capability to perform tasks, but out of the box (as it were), we can't really do a lot.

For everyone, at some point, this is a source of great frustration. If you've ever learned a foreign language or practised an art or developed any sort of skill, you'll understand the frustration I mean. The frustration of looking out at the general population and thinking I can't do this, but he can, and she can, and they can... what if it's something in me? What if this thing is something that I just can't do?

There is a time after this, though. A time when, "suddenly", you can do what you worried about never being able to do. "Suddenly" is a relative term, and probably has quite a large dependence on just how disheartened you are when you first try something and fail. How large you perceive the difference between being incapable and being capable can be scary enough to put you off learning that skill for life. In some cases this might even be a good thing - it would encourage you to follow your more natural aptitudes. But in some cases, this perceived distance might be far larger than it is in reality.

Let's stop talking in generalisations, now, because you're probably wondering where all this is going, and if I carry on like this, I may soon forget myself. Let's take an example that most people reading this post can relate to. Riding a bike.

At some point, in the (long distant) past, you couldn't ride a bike. Then, at another point, you could. Nobody was born with an innate knowledge of how to ride a bike (probably). Even Danny MacAskill had to learn the basics of pedalling and balancing and even occasionally braking. (Probably). In between these two points, you learned. Maybe it was over a period of hours, or weeks, or months, but you "magically" went from a state of not being able to stay upright and moving and in control of a bicycle to having some level of competency of all three things.

It probably didn't make much sense at first. You'd probably seen other people cycle. Maybe your parents, or your siblings, demonstrated to you. You put your feet here, you pushed, you stayed up and you went round corners. O.k. Seems simple enough. Basic theory grasped. Then you would actually get on the bike, and realise (well, on some level of cognition) that just because you know how something should look - how, on the outside, it should be done - doesn't necessarily mean that you can just do it.

The brain's ability to adapt to a new skill; to develop a comfort with an entirely new form of movement; is breathtakingly wonderful. The natural ease with which we can move a machine as preposterously artificial as a bicycle is a marvel. It is possible to use the bicycle as an instrument of your will, as a tool with precise applications that you can manipulate to do anything which is within your skill-set. You have "mastered" riding a bike.

When you first ride in a bicycle race, you think this mastery merely needs to be applied. You know how a bike race looks, you know how to ride a bicycle. Surely you should be able to ride a bicycle in a bicycle race?

The trouble is, just because you know what a bike race looks like doesn't mean your brain is capable of telling your muscles what to do and when. A bike race is a different skill, one that needs possibly even more patient study than the initial learning of how to ride a bike.

I discovered this, to my detriment, at the Rothesay APR. Since then, I have been diligently studying, training and practising not just bicycle riding, but bicycle racing. Reading blogs, biographies and histories. Immersing myself as far as possible in the culture.

Just like learning to ride a bike, there was a time before I could race one. As of this weekend, I've taken my first wobbly pedal strokes as a bicycle racer. I have developed the skills well enough to use them for real, and my brain now knows what to do. I will make mistakes, and there is still a huge amount to learn, but the gulf that I once saw is no longer there.

The first road race of the Scottish season was in Gifford, East Lothian on Saturday the 3rd of March. As a Cat 4 rider, I would be in the "B" race, run in the morning before the main event of Cat 3 - Elite riders, who would scorch through 65 miles to our paltry 40 - 5 loops around an 8 mile circuit.

Having recce'd the course the previous week (albeit backwards), I had a fair idea of what to expect, and a workable plan "for the win", if it came down to it. Of course, I had no idea if I'd even be able to hold on yet, but I figured it'd be best to come prepared. The weather was fine, with a fresh westerly breeze that would hold any breakaways in check if they tried their luck on the inoffensive but open climb of the course. At our backs on the descent, it pushed up the speed to values that had cork smoke streaking from carbon wheels at the bottom corner, and I hadn't the confidence not to leave nervous gaps that would be filled by those aerodynamic enough to roll up through the group.

The initial roll-out was, to be frank, terrifying. Line adjustments and brake-taps were rife, and a mis-shift and thrown chain of a rider just in front of me and narrowly avoided split me from my 3 club-mates, who I wouldn't see again until after the finish line. On my own, I was vulnerable and inexperienced, and raced like I was weak, but I was canny. By following wheels, allowing speed already earned to carry me into spaces and using any time I was exposed as an excuse to move up the field, I was well-protected in the top 20 by the third lap. With an intermediate sprint for the finish line, I decided to give one of my winning strategies a trial run. The finish was on top of the lower side of a U - shaped valley, encouraging high speed descent to hold onto momentum. I went wide on the right as soon as the road in front was visible and took the front of the race. There was still just over 1 km to go, so I worked briefly with one other lad who had come away with me, but he wasn't pulling hard enough to keep the pack back. Happy enough with the practice run, I allowed myself to run on the front until 200m to the line and didn't push to hold back the three riders who went for the points. From a bad position, it wouldn't have been worth the effort. And I needed my legs for the finale.

We got into the final lap, and there was the expected increase in intensity, but it wasn't sustained. People were tiring. I was expecting this. Of the 20 of us, 10 had done most of the pulling, 5 were just holding on, and the rest of us were still in contention. A lone break had gone at the KOM on the last lap, but there was no way he'd stay out.

We got back onto the climb and he was still dangling, with another lone break now half-way between. At this point, I realised that something would have to be done, and I would have to adjust my plan. Initially, I had thought to break here and time-trial to the finish, hoping that a surprise sprint up the hill would catch people off-guard and allow my fast-descent strategy to hold me to the line. However, now, with a break to catch, I would need help. I took the front of the bunch and pulled hard, knowing that if we didn't increase speed now, we'd run the risk of racing for third. It was a big effort, though controlled to some degree, but I worried that I'd overdone it. Sure enough, I'd popped a few off the back, allowing me to sit back in about sixth as we came to the top.

All too soon, it was time to pull again. After a brief stint, I pulled out and let some of the race go by. Some of those who had popped were now back on, but showing strain. With unbroken lines, though, I had to wait until I was quite far back to slot in again.

Just before the descent into the U-shaped valley, there was a blind right-hander where we had previously passed an oncoming bus. The peleton fanned out wide a hundred metres before it, searching for my wide and fast line down the valley. I wasn't having it - it was too dangerous. I moved into the line on the left, abandoning my preferred line for carrying momentum. It was a moment of sense in the face of recklessness that, sadly, probably cost me the race.

Boxed in now as we took the descent, I found what space I could to maintain momentum, but there was an unbroken line of riders to my right and a soft verge to my left. With a kilometre to go, I seriously needed space. It would have been lovely to have a team of riders up there working for me, giving me the run-in to the line, but I was on my own and would have to make my own luck.

I was faster than the majority of the bunch at this point. Somehow, I had a sprint in my legs and there was no way through. A wide gap appeared in the middle of the pack at 800m - "Coming through!" I yelled, but once there, there was still no way forward. Then there was room on the left. I passed one rider, "On your left! On your left!", but the second wasn't having any of it. Bar to bar, I was millimetres from the road edge. He held his ground, leaned into me. I had no choice but to crash and roll onto the soft, grass verge.

Was it a dangerous manoeuvre? Probably, but then what part of a bunch sprint isn't dangerous?At some point, there was definitely a gap of a bike's width there, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get handlebar to handlebar with the other guy, and I'd passed the lad behind him with no problem or fanfare. The was no major crash, no damage done. I was the only one taken out of the finish, putting me into 26th position.

26th. I might have made third. I might have made first.

I wasn't going to settle for tenth.

I went home that day with a big smile on my face. Sure, I'd crashed. But I'd finished. I'd learned a ton, and, just as importantly, I'd successfully put into practice a whole host of things that I'd only learned in theory - in the classroom of the road, the club ride, the literature and the anecdotes of cycling. I had ridden well. I had finished the race. I had been in contention.

I had had a perfectly adequate race, and I hadn't been afraid to throw it all away for the chance of something great. One day, it might be about the mathematics. About getting that one point to upgrade to the next license category. For now, though, I've achieved something far more important to me.

I've learned how to start racing my bike.

Photo courtesy of Michael Dougal