Acme Wheelers - Columns - Dale's Diary

 August 2007

 April 2007

Ciao!

A brief update

Weather is pretty damn good out here at the minute, been about 20-25 degrees for the last 3-4 weeks, which is pretty sweet!

Got 5th in a race the other day, they give you some odd prizes out here! My prizes have been some money, trophy, bedside lamp, wine, toilet roll, crisps, olive oil, chocolate, brushes!

Italian! Ha ha!

Ciao for now!

Dale

 11th January 2007

Commonwealth Games Road Race
This morning I woke bright and early and we all met at the breakfast table 3hrs before the start of the race. We had a meeting the night before about the race tactics and Yanto and Winny were going to be the protected riders, with Gez looking after himself to be able to support them in the finale. My job was to tag some of the early moves and protect Winny riding in the wind, keeping him at the front and out of trouble. Good thing about being a cyclist is that we get to have a huge breakfast! After breakfast we all went back to our rooms chilling out before meeting back up later on to ride the 15mins down to the course. It was so hot racing with the temperature being at 32 degrees most of the race. After tagging a few moves I got away in a group of 5. We got a gap but then got brought back, I sat up then the exact same riders drifted off the front again and that was the move that stuck, which lasted for about 8 laps. Typical huh! So with the move up the road, I looked after Winny the rest of the race keeping him up at the front, until about lap 8 when there was a crash in front of me and I had nowhere to go except hitting the tarmac. I got back on my bike and chased but couldn't get back on and that was my race over with! Its fair to say that more than a few swear words left my mouth! Both Winny and Yanto didn't have the legs to go with the Aussie's and South African's when they started to race. But I think everyone heard the recent news about the rider who came 3rd , Alan Davies!

Archer GP
This was my first race with my new trade team, Recycling.co.uk. The team for the race was Me, Rob Partridge, Kristian House, Robin Sharman, Ben Greenwood and Evan Oliphant. My job for the day was to get into the early move and let the other teams make the racing so the rest of the team could sit back. 2nd time up the climb I won the hill prime and got away in about a group of 8-10 riders with one of them being my team mate Rob. With the first job of the day done, we kept riding through until a few of the weaker riders got dropped. Rob got the order to sit on the break with me still riding through, so we had a fresh rider just in case the move stuck till the finish. John told us over the radio that a group of 4 were coming over to us that included Ben and Robin so Rob and me sat on the break until the joined us with about 55km to go. When we got onto the finishing circuits we took it in turns attacking the break trying to get a smaller group away. I was riding so strong today, it's definitely the best I've felt on a bike. But I hesitated when the break went because we already had 2 riders in it and that was the one that stuck to the finish. I was happy but so mad at myself that I weren't in it. In the end we got 3rd with Robin, Ben 5th , Rob 6th and me 7th. Good team result but not the win we should have got!

Girvan 3-Day
The team was the same as our team in the Archer GP, so we had 4 riders who could have won this race overall. I said at the start that I wanted to target the King Of Mountains jersey, as I was probably the strongest climber in the Archer GP. We achieved what we set out to do with Rob winning the first stage and Kristian getting 2nd, so Rob took the yellow jersey for the afternoon Criterium. Then Kristian took the yellow jersey after winning the Criterium and Evan placing 2nd . On the road stage the next day Kristian kept yellow placing 3rd on the stage. Then on the last day Kristian placed 2nd on the stage keeping his yellow jersey. We pretty much cleaned up in that race. Kristian won the yellow jersey, I lead in the King Of Mountains jersey from start to finish. Rob won the U23 jersey and we won the Team prize. With all our placings on the other stages we won quite a bit of cash!

Rutland-Melton Classic
I done this race last year and loved it! British version of a Belgium classic, we didn't have a team tactic for this we all agreed to ride our own race and see what situation we was in towards the end of the race, with Chris Newton being team captain on the road to tell us the tactics. In a race like this where it is so easy to crash or puncture I didn't have a goal for this race because you just hope that you don't have any bad luck. I tried to select the moves which I tagged only going with the moves that the strong riders were in and positioned myself close to the front for the bad sectors. I knew in a race like this with the terrain if you didn't have any bad luck the strong riders would be left at the finish. I got myself into a 5 man move half way through the race, but I hit the back wheel of Jonathan Dayus and came down, but got onto my bike really quick and got back into the bunch. Then full of adrenaline I attacked but got brought back then Evan countered me spending the next 40km up the rode leaving us to have an easy ride and sit back. On the worst sector of the race the break split which left 7 of us at the front of the race, with 4 Recycling.co.uk riders in it, me, Kristian, Robin and Chris. We took it in turns to attack the rest of the break, but got brought back every time. With about 5km to go on the 2nd to last bad sector I punctured, so was left with a chase to try and catch back up to the break, resulting with me catching the break on the line to find out that we had a 1-2 with Robin taking the win and Chris taking the sprint. I got 6th on the day, because Andrew Roache who was in the break with us crashed on the last corner breaking his collarbone.

Welsh Road Race Championships
I was glad when this race came around because I was well up for it. I rode the course in the week before the race and its fair to say that it was pretty brutal! The weather was good for me today as it was raining, something that I hoped for. I was the marked man for this race, so I knew I had to be in the early break or otherwise everyone would be looking at me to chase. I tagged every move until after about 15km Neil Jones attacked up this climb and a group of 5 of us got away and that was it for the rest of the race. Until with about 50km to go Neil Jones attacked again and only I could go with him. I tried bluffing him at the beginning giving him easy turns, until he started to sit up aswell and 2 riders was starting to close on us so I started to give him hard turns to try and crack him. Then when he started suffering I attacked him with about 25km to go and dropped him, but I waited for him and on the next 2 climbs he tried to drop me, but couldn't. Then with about 15km to go I attacked him on a climb and soloed in for the win, 1:40mins ahead of 2nd place, sweet!

 14th February 2006

Hey, Everyone at ACME!

Long time no see for most of the riders huh!?

Saw Dave out the other day training, after a quick chat by the side of the road, I had a phone call later in the day off Dave asking to write some diary's for the website…so here goes!

Bangkok, (Tour of Siam)
3 films, 2 Documentaries, listening to loads of music and seeing who could get the highest score on the in flight Tetris game (Yanto won by the way) we finally arrived in Bangkok, 12hrs later. First thing you notice when you have to race in Bangkok is the heat difference! Whilst lining up for the first stage, the temperature was 40 degrees a big change from a few days earlier descending off the Bwlch hoping your bottles don't freeze by the time you get to the bottom! Man! They race hard out here, it seems like all they do is attack so much difference from the racing back home, they race so aggressive and the speed don't go under 40km/h much either. This is the first race I have been in where the yellow jersey is the rider who does all the attacking, still with 200km to go!! We had a good race overall, with Winny doing what he usually does by winning a stage, spending sometime in the green jersey and lying 3rd on G.C until he tried to win the race but blew. We also had a few top 10's on a couple of the stages and got a few riders into each of the breaks. Not bad for the first race of the season and it still being January. Which also helped to put a few quid in our pockets aswell!

Perfs Pedal Race
Ahhhh, that's more like it, nothing like waking up in the morning and looking out of the window of the B&B to see it raining and the temperature hovering around 2 degrees! It's a nice reminder that your are still in the U.K. I like racing in the cold and the rain, sorts the men from the boys I reckon! I went pretty well in the race, got 3rd . There's not a lot you can do when you are in the break with 3 Agisko-Viner riders. The race was pretty brutal for the season opener, with a lot of riders being spat in the first few laps on quite a hard course I followed a few moves but I didn't really have the legs to break it up with a fast moving bunch. With 2 laps to go, I followed a big effort by Oli Beckingsdale and that was when the break went. 13 riders got away. But that didn't stop the attacks, there's not a lot you can do with 3 Agisko-Viner riders in the break, jumping you all the time, was a bit of a lottery. In the uphill sprint got 2nd. Kev Dawson let a wheel go so I jumped him then hit out with 200m to go, thought I was going to win the sprint but used too big a gear and one rider got past me with about 20m to go. Lesson learnt for next time!