Mattie Dodd journal #12: a domestic interlude

Second-year under-23 Mattie Dodd rides for the UCI Continental Tirol-KTM development team, and is supported by the Rayner Foundation. In his latest post, Mattie shares his first experience of a National B road race and a not so egg-cellent adventure…

I wrote my last journal entry on the plane coming back to the UK, so it seems only fitting I should start my next one on the way out. After a month back home in London, I’m heading back to Austria to, hopefully, pick up where I left off.

The month back home was a self-enforced exile from Europe to “save up some days” in the logistical nightmare that is the 90-day rule. While my visa is in processing phase, I’m still subject to the rule and the headache it causes. Anyway, I’ll leave you to guess my thoughts on the dreaded “B-word”, and move on to talking about bike racing – that’s what you’re here for after all.

I’d been warned about Nat Bs. I was told how different the style of racing would be to what I’d spent the previous month doing

No rest for the wicked once I was back home though. I’d entered the RCR Fatcreations Nat B down near Chichester. I’d been warned about Nat Bs. Having never actually done one before, I was told how different the style of racing would be to what I’d spent the previous month doing. With fewer phases to the race, and a seemingly total lack of predictability, I was put under the impression that reading one was more like an art form than a science, as you could argue is more the case with UCI racing. Stay on your toes all the time, be ready to adapt – very much the theme of the day.

Mattie ‘giving it a nudge’ at the RCR FatCreations road race. Image: Ian Wrightson/The British Continental

I wasn’t wrong in the slightest with my expectations. I gave it a nudge on the first time up the climb, very early in the race, just to test the water. Two minutes later, I found myself in a group of twenty that never saw the bunch again. That group then proceeded to thin out every time the road went up, before the inevitable attacks came – spearheaded by a certain team wearing entirely black. The race was over for most before it even really started, proving I was right to approach it the way I did.

We may not have major climbs, but nowhere is pan flat. There’s no real drama in the races, everybody just tends to get their head down and crack on. I suppose that’s a mindset the Brits carry into normal life as well

You get told about how each country, regardless of the level, has the same style and characteristics of racing. In Italy, everything is very exaggerated, you’re either full gas, or hardly touching the pedals. In Belgium and Holland, no prisoners are taken – narrow roads, wind, bad weather, those concrete slabs… France even goes as far as having difference styles of racing depending on the region. Britain’s racing character is unique in a way, it’s something we’ve become accustomed to since the juniors. There are no easy races here, the draggy roads mean you can never really take your foot off the gas. We may not have major climbs, but nowhere is pan flat. There’s no real drama in the races, everybody just tends to get their head down and crack on. I suppose that’s a mindset the Brits carry into normal life as well.

Anyway, enough of my existential analogies. After that, it was a few weeks of no racing before turning my attention to the Rutland-Melton CiCLE Classic. Being Britain’s only one day UCI, and earlier this year, looking set to be Britain’s only UCI at all, I bit the hand off the person offering me a spot to race it. I was set to part of the regional South East team, supported by Sigma Sports, not my usual team, Tirol-KTM.

Mattie before the RCR FatCreations road race. Image: Ian Wrightson/The British Continental

The forecast for the day of the race looked set to be pretty biblical, but most of us just shrugged it off with a bit of dark humour. Having all seen the photos of the race last year, we expected a lot of mud, and therefore, chaos. The day before, during my recce of the course, the weather didn’t show any signs of the impending downpour that night. A quintessentially British, overcast day, the gravel sectors seemed a little damp, but posed no more traction issues than you’d expect when the surface beneath you isn’t entirely fixed in place.

It turns out Rutland’s country lanes aren’t the best equipped to handle twelve hours of torrential rain, and the first utterings of a potential delay started to trickle through

The morning of the race being cold and wet, everyone headed to the start town of Oakham expecting a repeat of last year’s conditions. A car park littered with riders eating plain white rice while shaking hands pinned on numbers – the true glamour of bike racing was plain to see. It turns out Rutland’s country lanes aren’t the best equipped to handle twelve hours of torrential rain, and the first utterings of a potential delay started to trickle through. Quite quickly, that turned into an official announcement of a delay to the start time.

It turns out nerves and impatience set the rumour turning at a rapid rate. We’d seen the pictures of the course and knew that large parts were underwater, and not rideable at all. “They’re going to just cut the Owston part”, “It’ll be just the finish laps”, “The Wymondham laps are rideable” – just some of the things coming out of peoples’ mouths. “Everyone is going to take the ferry to France and restart at the Carrefour de l’Arbre” was muttered at one point – I wonder who came up with that one…

Half an hour before the new start time, the final call came through – cancelled. Though bitterly disappointing for all of us riders, as well as the organiser, the images coming through showed no other option. Large parts of the course couldn’t be driven, sending 170 bike riders through them at 50 kph would have ended in tears, to put it mildly.

With that, we started driving back to London, I asked to be dropped off near Milton Keynes and rode home from there. The day being capped off by someone throwing an egg out of a car window at me. Probably one of the weirdest experiences I’ve had on a bike – coming around a corner and taking an egg to the chest. I have to say, it was a great shot, but pretty bizarre, and they could have at least fried it for me…

Bike all packed up (it stinks now, can’t think why…) and kit stuffed back in my suitcase, I’m back off to Austria. By the time this comes out, I’ll have finished the GP Vorarlberg and I’ll be in Tirol for a few weeks of training before my next race, the Tour de la Mirabelle, kicking off what looks to be the next part of a busy season until mid-October.