Hog Hill Winter series #9 : 14/02/09

[Scott Bentley]

I am a fan of Hog hill, I've never made any secret of this, it has a great surface, a well designed and flexible layout and a testing hill. However my only gripe is that the bottom part of the circuit seems to be prone to flooding with water collecting in the worst possible places. I'm hoping as the circuit matures this will become less of a problem as the vegetation will hold onto the water better. As you can tell from this intro the bottom half of the circuit was waterlogged... Again. So the race was conducted in a clockwise direction and the 'indy' hairpins were also thrown in for good measure giving us a 1.1k circuit. While this doesn't look a whole lot different to the circuit we raced a few weeks ago it was a harder as you couldn't carry your speed into the series of hairpins.

This week we probably had more Dulwich riders than ever before. In the 4ths we had Eoin, Keiron and Laurence and in the 3rds we had Dan, Greg and myself. From the gun it was a quick race and Greg and Dan stayed in the middle of the pack as I drifted back, by the end of the first lap I had slipped into the latter third and by the end of the second lap I was pretty much at the back and fully off the back by the third lap. Dan and Greg were still mixing it up in the main field but 20 minutes in Greg was feeling the pressure and was slipping off the back as well as his heart rate was up in the 190s

The last time we raced this circuit I managed to tough out a 9th, however there was going to be no such position this time, there wasn't as many punctures and the field ahead of me was a good 20 riders strong. About 25 minutes in I was lapped by the main field and Dan was still up there with the big boys. Shortly after I started getting some hand signals from the marshalls, and it became clear pretty soon there were a few men down on the bottom hairpin. This came as no surprise as my back wheel had stepped out at this point on at least 3 occasions before this, one of the riders never moved for the rest of the race and it seemed far too long before the ambulance got down there to attend to him.

As I continued to ride round on my own, occasionally picking off people ahead I could see I was gaining on Greg and after a few more laps managed to close in on him. He was pretty shattered by this point and I managed to pass him, he refused my wheel and I took off and pulled out some distance on him. By this point I could see that the pack were still really motoring and only half a lap from me, I was hanging out for those 5 lap to go boards to come out. Greg managed to make his way back to my back wheel and for a lap or two we rode together until I pulled away again on the hill.

A lap or two later the pack were closing in on me again and I was lapped for the second time with 5 laps to go, it was good to see Dan had held his place as the front group of 12 came past me.
I finished the race over 2 laps behind the leaders and filthy dirty, a terrible race from start to finish.

Distance 30.9km
Max Speed 55.7kph
Ave Speed 29.8kph
Max Cad. 126
Ave Cad. 87
Max HR 174 - 94%
Ave HR 160 - 86%

[Kieron]

Scott, your race report says it all - I'm suprised that a purpose built circuit like Hog Hill (Bog Hill?) is compromised so regularly due water and mud on the circuit. I'm hoping for a full circuit for the last week, I need that bit of recovery time between the hills!
Laurence, I noticed another Dulwich rider on saturday, but didn't get a chance to hi. Hi. The shock of my first race and a nasty ride to Hog Hill, meant I didn't finish, so you surely get merit for seeing it through to the end. I'm sure you'll be happier with the result this week if you are racing.

[Guy Phillips]

'Scuse, was confused with 'bottom part of circuit'. Having never been there would not know where the 'flat bits' are...

[Scott Bentley]

Tell me Guy, what part of that circuit is flat?

[Guy Phillips]

Hmmm.... your av HR is higher on the flat than on the Hoggenburg... whatever you're having, make mine a double...!

[Scott Bentley]

Sorry Laurence for some reason when I got home my lactic acid addled brain had you down as an Alexander, anyway, blog amended. Yeah a really tough race this week, I'm hoping next week will be on the full circuit and we may all get some time to recover on the flat section. Well done for hanging in there, I've learned that racing is as much in the head as the legs.

[Laurence]

Nice write up Scott. I met you very briefly I believe before the 4ths race and just wanted to say cheers for the encouragement - it was very much appreciated (if it was indeed you) whilst I was out there all alone! It was a bit of a shock to the system for my first ever race but still plenty of room for improvement. Pleased I finished after the inner demons were telling me to turn it in! All good prctice!