All Terrain Ride in Peace Race Team

Planning next year’s rides? How about Liege Bastogne Liege.

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This time last year (quite possibly after a glass of wine) I messaged my local club to see if anyone was interested in riding the 256km Sportive route of the 2019 Liege Bastogne Liege, 5 others were keen. It was on.

6 became 5, became 4 but this did mean slightly easier logistics for the journey over. Various options were discussed but we eventually settled on this, we would go in one vehicle, a van, we would take the ferry from Hull to Zeebrugge overnight on the Thursday then drive to Liege for lunchtime, we stayed in the very well kept Youth Hostel, complete the ride on the Saturday, watch the race on the Sunday then drive to Calais on Monday morning and pop through the tunnel and drive back north. This kept costs down and maximised our time in Belgium.

The Sportive started early on a damp and cold Saturday morning,  unfortunately one of our group had a di2 failure on the line so had to opt for the shorter course. I won’t go into too many details but 12 cold hours later we finished the 165 mile route. It’s tough, with most of the hills coming thick and fast in the last 60 miles, the feed stations were pretty good but with no hot drinks or food available the first half, wet and windy really took it’s toll. Luckily the sun made the odd appearance in the afternoon to brighten damp spirits.

Back at the hostel we enjoyed a few well deserved beers and pizza before enjoying the pro race on the Sunday (albeit most of it from in a bar drinking trappist ale).

LBL is notorious for it’s short sharp hills and bad weather and it delivered, in spades, but as one of our gang said if you do the Liege Bastogne Liege and the weather’s not shite you’ve not really done the Liege Bastogne Liege.

Its been a busy opening few weeks of the 2018 season for the Saltaire based All Terrain Cycles Race Team, with a number of riders in action across a range of disciplines.

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In Mountain Biking, Bruce Rollinson, Stewart Coates, Ryan Middlemiss and Hamish Thomas were in action at the National Series Cross Country races at Sherwood Pines. A nice sunny day on a drying but fast course, saw Bingley based Bruce and Stewart neck and neck in the Grand Masters V50 event, won by former pro rider Tim Davies of CC Abergavenny. The All Terrain Cycles pair spent most of the race in 6th and 7th place until the last lap when a resurgent former National Champion Tim Gould got past them both. After a bizzare foot in rear wheel incident Stew got ahead of Bruce going into the finishing loops, and they finally finished in 7th and 8th place respectively.

Stew Coates and Bruce Rollinson

Stew hot on the heels of Bruce in the V50 event

On the road, Keighley based rider Chris Sherriffs has had a great start to the season, picking up a number of top ten results. First up was the Rosendale RC 11 mile Time Trial held in freezing conditions near Bolton by Bowland at the end of February. Despite not feeling great Chris turned in a great performance to pick up 3rd place, and putting time into some notable riders shows that his early season training is coming to fruition. Over the following weekends Chris raced at the Salt Ayre circuit series in Lancashire, picking up two fourth places, a fifth and a sixth, all of these events coming in sprint finishes behind small breakaway groups with Chris winning the bunch sprint.

Chris Sherriffs rides in the Rosendale RC 11 mile TT

Also on the road, another Keighley based rider Steve Colloby opened his 2018 road account this weekend at the Town Green Masters RR near Bickerstaffe in Lancashire. After missing the 7 man breakaway group which went early on, Steve put in a strong performance to try and chase down the break, before leaving the remaining pack behind to take 8th place over the line. This comes on the back of a return to Track racing for Steve after a 20 year hiatus, as he has been competing regularly at Manchester Regional Track League over the past couple of months, also turning out some good results and getting a number of wins under his belt.

Colloby in action in the Town Green Masters RR (Photo courtesy of Ellen Isherwood)

With some great results this early on its looking like a great season ahead for the All Terrain Cycles Race Team.