Page 46 - The Bugle Autumn 2016 Issue 12

THAT’S TWO PATCHES OF DNA LEFT ON THE ROAD
Road Cycling Club
The past year has been at out as per normal in the world of top end cycling for the 1 RIFLES Cycling Team. The focus has been the development of novice riders and racing at all levels across British Cycling and Competitive Time Trails. The team has grown in number and despite an operational deployment and numerous exercises the results have continued to come in. At Army level WO2 Jones has been appointed Captain of the Army Cycling race team and Maj Hunt Captain of the Army TT team. Both teams have been prominent at national level with some big results so far.
The winter was spent improving team member’s base tness and endurance. Maj Hunt led three sessions a week of structured training, utilising Wattbikes and the rolling roads of South Wales. Wednesday’s faithful often endured 4-5 hours of cold and wet training miles, with Tuesdays and Fridays spent in the pain cave of the Wattbike room.
The culmination of the hard winter training was a one week cycling exercise in Holland and Belgium (Ex Bugle Berg). The team was based on the outskirts of Maastricht and ideally positioned to train in “Berg country”, berg being Flemish for small steep hill. Day one saw the team rolling out to famil- iarise themselves with the bergs and get a lesson on riding in Europe. It didn’t take long for LCpl Gaston to forget how to steer his bike and crash into LCpl Spriggs leaving the rst of many patches of his DNA on the Dutch roads. On review LCpl Gaston put his temporary loss of memory down to the amount of info he had to take in whist riding on the wrong side of the road! Day two put the team on the nishing circuit of the Amstel gold classic a 140Km route with 15 bergs. At the mid-way point the team split in two with the developing riders jumping on to the shorter 100Km route. Day 3 was again spent in berg country with a shorter route as we had a Dutch circuit race to attend in the evening. Unfortunately the weather got the worse of the locals and the race was called off so out came the rollers to get the mileage in. Day 4 and a 100 miler; for a developing cyclist bagging your rst 100 is a milestone achievement. The day started well, the sun was out, the route selected by Maj Hunt was attish and there was no sign of the cross winds that had promised to make the day a tough one. LCpl Bodley was on point with Maj Hunt
44 FIRST BATTALION
for the day with WO2 Jones looking after the rest at the back. It went without issue till the 60 mile point where LCpl Spriggs started to show signs of fatigue and managed to unaided fall off his bike again. That’s two patches of DNA left on the road and two pairs of Rapha shorts down!. The day nished in the spa town of Aachen just in the German border. LCpl Gaston dug deep in the last 10 miles consuming all spare food and drink that the group had to survive. Good coffee and cake had all the team buzzing about the day. Day 5 was a recovery day up the George cannel towards Antwerp with LCpl Bodley leading the development team and WO2 Jones and Maj Hunt conducting VO2 race sharpness efforts. Day 6 was the big ride and we had selected Liege Bastogne Liege race route to have our nal ride on. This is noted as one of the toughest one day races on the pro calendar. The length was 200Km and nished on the famous climb La Radoute 3km
THE RIFLES