Aviemore 2009

Surprise, surprise, it rained. Just like last year although it wasn't as cold. Two days of bike racing, four races over the two days. Bike heaven!

This year, like last, I decided to drive over on the Saturday morning rather than heading there the night before. That meant a 5.30am start and a two hour drive so it's little wonder that I didn't perform great on the Saturday morning. That said, I was still a minute faster than 2008 for the climb up Cairngorm - 6 miles of gradual incline before the final 2 miles of hell up to the ski station! Good enough to just make the top 20 - a decent start.

The afternoon race, the Mackie Trophy, is a 14 mile time trial around a rolling circuit outside of Aviemore. By the race start at 2pm the wind was howling and it was raining hard. Lovely! As I set off down towards Kincraig I felt really uncomfortable on the tri-bars as the wind gusted and almost blew me off! I had to grab the brakes and grovel into the wind. After the turn in Kincraig I felt better on the rolling back roads, but never really got into a rhythm. Still, I managed to beat last year's time by exactly 60 seconds! All in all not a bad first day!

Dinner on Saturday night was fun in the Ski-ing Doo with Duncan, Liz, Marco & John. Good to switch off from racing although the restaurant weren't delighted with us - five cyclists so no deserts and all drinking diet coke. Hey ho!

Sunday morning we woke up to.............rain :( Yep, same as last year again! After a hearty breakfast of porridge, scrambled eggs on toast and a hot scone (cheers Pete!), we set off for Kincraig and the morning race - a 10 mile TT on a reputed "fast" course. Well, it wasn't fast for me. In fact, I recorded a season's worst (!) time for 10 miles - my legs were just dead and clearly not recovered from the efforts of the day before.

It was a tired and grumpy Alasdair that got off the bike at the end of the race and packed the TT bike into the car, ready to go home and skip the final race of the weekend. I was that pissed off! Fortunately my mates gave me a good talking to and convinced me to ride the afternoon race - a 28 mile APR. After eating half a malt-loaf, downing a couple of mini-cokes, and scoffing a couple of caffiene gels, I decided to give it a go.

And I'm so glad I did! My legs had recovered and I felt really strong in the APR. Our group had 9 riders, and only 4 of us were doing any work - the rest were just hanging on. After Kingussie Marco attacked with two others so I played the loyal team-mate and hung back and blocked anyone else getting across. Me & Callum (team-mate) sat a few hundred meters behind the front three and waited to see what would happen. It was clear that one of the three was struggling so we bridged across. There were now 3 Deesiders in the group and our numbers would count.

On the climb out of the village I got on the front and put the hammer down. I put everything I had into it and split the group again. This time me, Marco, and one of the other boys got away. Me & Marco took turns at trying to work the boy over - great fun!

As we got near to Kingussie we reeled in the first group, and then shortly after we were caught by the scratch group. The peloton was now about 30 riders! Halfway round the final lap I eventually paid for my earlier efforts and slowly but surely slipped off the back. I wasn't too disappointed - I had put everything into it and hadn't expected to ride that well. Eventually I came in about 3 minutes down on the leaders - a good afternoon's efforts.

Aviemore's a great weekend and I'll definitely be back however next year I might not bother with the hill climb. 4 races over 2 days fairly takes it out of you and even with a sports massage on Monday I'm still feeling tired.

Only 2 more races to go this season then it's beer & pies for a month :)