The final round of the 2012 Halfords Tour Series will be held tonight in Stoke on Trent.
Some of the best teams in Britain will go wheel-to-wheel in front of thousands of spectators and television cameras stationed to broadcast the action on national television the following day.
But anyone who suspects the lifestyle of the professional cyclists racing before the cheering crowds to be one of unalloyed glamour is mistaken. For the riders, the Tour Series means long days, hard evenings, and time with family snatched between races.
The car park of Woking leisure centre is only a few minutes from the circuit of the penultimate round, but feels a million miles from the crowds and excitement.
Mechanics prepare the machines on which their riders will depend in the intense hour that lies ahead. Team managers hold final conferences before departing in liveried team cars, while several of the riders, somewhat incongruously given the setting, warm up on rollers set up in the car park.
Niklas Gustavsson, third at the London IG Nocturne just three days earlier, zips past with UK Youth teammate Yanto Barker, the two men engrossed in conversation, a broad smile on Gustavsson’s face. Several of the Raleigh-GAC boys ride out from the car park together as if to begin a training ride.
In an area of the car park colonized by Team IG-Sigma Sport, one of just six British teams competing at UCI Continental level, the mood is relaxed but focused, shifting notably to the latter as the time to leave for the circuit approaches.
The small group of riders represent a blend of youth and experience. Jake Hales warms up intently on the rollers while Tom Murray tapes his knee and Simon Richardson, with hat, and two layers visible beneath his team issue puffa jacket, sits in the van.
Murray has ridden every round of the Tour Series, and will race tonight at its denouement. Now in his fifth year a professional, and with a host of experiences, ranging from the amateur Liege-Bastogne-Liege to winning a silver medal with Team Sky’s Alex Dowsett at this year’s national madison championship, he has seen the Tour Series grow. He believes the quality of racing in Britain has risen since his neo-pro season to a standard that is now the equal of competition overseas.
Murray has driven four hours from his home in Huddersfield for tonight’s round. After racing for an hour in front of television cameras and the thousands of people already lining the streets, he will get in his car and drive home. The choice, he admits, is his own. Travel is a matter of personal preference. Some riders stay away on Monday and Wednesday nights, he says, the days between rounds of the Series, while others return home. Murray prefers to spend the days between races preparing on local roads and catching up with his family.
Today, his day began at 9am with a bowl of porridge and a ride of about 90 minutes. Sometimes he’ll use his early morning ride merely to turn the pedals; on other occasions, he’ll “throw in” efforts to wake his body and prepare it for the challenge ahead. An early lunch (around 11.30am) consists of pasta and salad, a meal he’ll have again at around 3.30pm.
In the final few minutes before the team departs for the circuit, the rising tension is palpable. Hales and Simon Gaywood pedal around the car park, eager it seems to get on with the job, and to remain in the state of readiness induced by their session on the rollers. Richardson joins them, stepping from the van and climbing aboard his bike, while Murray finishes his session on the rollers. He says he no longer experiences pre-race nerves until he is on the start line. There, he says, adrenaline is a necessary and helpful tool. “When you’re about to fire into a crit, you need those nerves.”
The success of a crit rider lies, he says, in the ability to recover, not only between races, but within a race. A typical criterium circuit will contain four or five corners, which, he says, will require the rider to sprint up to sixty times in a race. “For a crit rider, it’s good to have that natural speed and ‘jump’ in your legs. I grew up riding the track so I have good speed.”
Each rider having mounted his bike, a few final words are exchanged as a group and they are gone, off on a short ride to the town centre and another world, where thousands of people await them and their competitors. Elbow’s One Day Like This throbs from the PA, spectators stand in rows three or four deep, while the announcer stokes the atmosphere by instigating Mexican waves among the crowd. It’s show time.
