Kings Cup Masters Gravel Race, 24 Sep 2022

This was my first ‘gravel’ race, and a chance to try a relatively new genre of racing that I was looking forward to greatly. Being less technical offroad and staying on your bike the whole time (crashes excepted, see below) it seemed ideal for my set of ‘skills’. The Kings Cup British Gravel Championships was held for the first time last year and sounded great, so I signed up. Knowing that the course was fast and flat, I wanted to get some specific fast tyres, and squeeze a wider one into my CX bike, deciding that 38mm on the front and 35mm on the back would work well. Annoyingly it then proved impossible to get a 35mm version in time, so I did the race with a 38mm on the back as well, with about 1mm clearance either side – some praying was involved!

Coming into the race in reasonably good form, I wasn’t too sure what to expect. It was a 10mile circuit and a 2 hour race. You could only recce the course by going the day before, which I didn’t do, so only had other peoples’ descriptions to go on (“about half gravel paths, half trails, some sand, nothing too technical” was the briefing). Not knowing if it would be ridden in groups like a road race, or essentially solo like a CX race, I went mentally prepared for both (it ended up being about half of each). Arriving in plenty of time and meeting teammate Andy there we had the chance to register and warm up before lining up for the race. The start was arranged into 5 year age group categories, with 35-39 male and then female going off first, and so on every minute or so up towards me in the 50-54 and Andy in the 55-59 age groups.

The whistle finally went for my AG to start and … I had the worst start it’s possible to have! I’ve had good starts in CX and not so good ones, but this was truly awful – I made at least 6 attempts to clip in before finally getting going, by which time I was pretty much at the back. I managed to make up some places before the first narrow part, which then held me up in traffic for a bit. Finally I could get the hammer down and punish myself for my stupidity by riding much harder than I intended for the first lap, all thoughts of pacing myself for the first part out of the window. I overtook lots of people and towards the end of the lap started to get with some other riders going at a similar pace so eased off a bit, especially after finding a tough headwind section where it was easier in a group. The race carried on like this for the next lap or so, with the large group containing quite a few from my AG not wanting to let anyone get away. I had no idea where I was placed so figured I would just keep going as best I could, shelter in the windy sections and wait to see what happened. At the end of the second lap, I lost the back of the group through a technical part, then a few more seconds getting a new bidon from teammate Roland (thanks swannie!) and had to work hard in the early part of the lap, getting back to the same group again. I started hatching a plan to try and drop the group along the early part of the last lap.

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen because near the end of lap 3 I went down, ‘encouraged’ shall we say, by another rider. He had blocked me off on the previous corner and I should have let it lie but a little red mist fell and I wanted to get past him. He could have given me room but didn’t and the next thing I knew I was going down hard into a verge with brambles etc, on the same side that was still sore from my recent crash (of course!). I picked myself up, made sure the chain was on and got going again, having lost about 30 seconds stopped and a bit more where I was getting back up to speed. I seemed basically fine so as I came through the finish for the last lap it was time to get the hammer down as I was on my own. I went into TT mode all the way to the headwind section, and luckily at that point two faster riders from another AG had caught me so I sat on their wheel for a bit. We came up to a group which turned out to be the same group that I had been with before! The thought occurred to try and go straight past them, but caution prevailed and I stayed on the back for the last half lap. After recovering for a little I did start to wonder about beating them (and especially the guy that took me down!) but this part of the lap hadn’t suited me before and leaving it to a sprint finish wasn’t ideal. I’d forgotten about a section where a downhill and a sandy section was followed by a steepish little rise (the steepest part of the course) so I made a last minute decision to attack up the climb and see what happened. And I got a gap! I’ve no idea how big it was but it went quiet behind me, so I went for it, almost running straight into a tree on the next corner! Through the section where I’d crashed the previous lap and then it was onto the finish area and giving it everything for the line, managing to stay ahead of the group (and most importantly, you know who!).

I had no idea where I had come but that felt as good as winning after the mistakes I’d made! The results later put me 17th out of 60 in my age group – not bad but I can’t help wondering if I could have done better. I will definitely be doing more of these!

Tim Phillips