IL Norodd Sykkel did a great job at arranging their annual road race called Vårmila ('The Autumn Mile' in English). Readers of my blog from 23rd April may remember me writing that "For some bizarre reason, Norwegian’s refer to ‘10kms’ as being ‘1 mile'". Well, now it becomes even more bizarre because The Autumn Mile, in other words The Autumn 10km, was actually 48km.........
Anyway, The Autumn Mile starts and finishes at the Primary School in Frei, near Kristiansund. The course covers 2 laps of 24kms. Each lap starts with a hill, has a few hills en-route and finishes with a hill. I'm not a big fan of hills so I didn't have high expectations going into the race although I was buoyed by the fact that 9 weeks of suffering from knee pain seems to be coming to an end.
Course map
Course profile
111 riders started the race with the two main local teams signaling their intent on the start line; Nesset CK Elite (in white) and IL Norodd Sykkel (in Yellow and black).
Start line
Predictably, Nesset CK Elite dominated the race from start to finish - their riders are simply on another level! They immediately launched a number of attacks and I don't think we'd even reached 10kms before they ended up with a break of 5 riders - the head of the race looked more like a Team TT than a road race! One of the Nesset guys must have dropped out as 4 of them crossed the line together with Martin Notøy Nevstad claiming 1st spot in a time of 1:11:59.
Nesset CK Elite - break of 5 riders (winner Martin Notøy Nevstad, number 81)
Winner: Martin Notøy Nevstad (Nesset CK Elite)
The rest of us battled it out behind the Nesset break. A group of about 10 riders went clear on one of the hills about 15kms into the race (including 2 Nesset CK Elite riders that decided not to get into the leading break, promising young rider Marius Tomren from Molde CK, and a number of strong IL Norodd Sykkel riders). I was only about 50 metres off the group at the top of the hill and unlike last week's race when I dropped back to a group behind me, I was determined to get up to the group ahead of me. A number of IL Norodd Sykkel riders sat up in front of me and did their best to slow things down so that their guys could get away in the group ahead but sensing that the group ahead was not working together, I put in a huge effort to chase them down. I was joined by two or three other riders (one from Ulstein og Omegn SK, one from IL Norodd Sykkel - to the dislike of his team mates that sent some colourful language his way, and I think the third was from Ålesund og Omegn CK) and between us we managed to bridge the gap. I thought that I was in a small group of riders at the time so I was gutted to realise that we'd actually taken the whole peloton with us. My HR was pounding away at 190 BPM and my legs were completely finished. I knew that there was another 30kms or so to go, and with lots of hills, so I thought that my race was over and that I would not be able to hold on to any surges from the main field.
I took a breather and fortunately my legs (and lungs) recovered in time for the big hill at the end of lap 1 / start of lap 2. At the top of that hill, I had hung on to a group of 26 riders that were behind the lead group of 4 Nesset CK Elite riders.
The chasing group (with me in there somewhere)
The group stayed together for the whole of the 2nd lap. The race finished with a steep 1km hill and David Dagestad Myklebust (Nesset CK Elite) led my group across the finish line in a time of 1:15:24 meaning that Nesset CK Elite secured the top 5 places. Marius Tomren (Molde CK) followed closely, and was the first non-Nesset CK Elite rider. I was 14th in the group meaning that I was 18th overall out of 111 riders. I finished in a time of 1:15:44. My average speed was 38.5 km/h with an average HR of 164 BPM (max HR 190 BPM). I was very happy with my performance.
I had to get home to collect my son from a friend's house so I didn't hang around for the prize ceremony. I was gutted to realise when the results were published that evening that I'd actually come 2nd in my class (Masters 30-39) and had missed the opportunity to actually get onto the podium. I was a junior champion at 10mile time-trials but stopped racing when I was about 16 years old. After a 20 year break, I started racing push-bikes again last year (with a few sportives the year before). Handsling Racing added me to their team roster this year. Handsling Racing is a UK-based team that competes in British Elite, Masters and Veterans events on the road, track and in xc mountain biking. The team is supported by some great sponsors including Handsling Media Ltd, Action Cameras, Trigon Bicycles, RST Cycle Clothing, Schwalbe Tyres and the Ace Centre. One of my brother's (Vince 'Vegas' Halpern) rides for the team and I joined largely because of him. It would be fair to say that I am not the most illustrious member of the team but joining them has provided me with added motivation this year (which is probably why my knees have been suffering for the last 9 weeks from a winter of overtraining), so it is nice to get a podium place for the team on foreign soil. This is how it would have looked if I was there:
M30-39 Podium
Race Results
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