W hen asked if I fancied racing for the Old Speckled Hen team in the Brompton World Championships, I tempered my over-excitement with realism.

Yes, I love the BWC. Yes, Old Speckled Hen is my favourite ale. But several recent bike-journalism offers have come to nothing, and this perfect marriage was almost certain to break up.

The BWC is the highlight of the annual Bike Blenheim Palace event. It starts early with a serious long-distance sportive (road race) and a time trial on the 6.5km road around the palace grounds. This year they had tricycle racing (I kid not) and at midday: the Brompton races.

I tried to enter a Cyclox team but the registration had been full way back in July. To allay this disappointment, the palace had given our team passes so we could at least familiarise ourselves with the route.

Late on Friday the shock confirmation came through: I was actually registered to race with Old Speckled Hen’s team. I had never in my life raced before, and it was too late to start training. I felt over-excited and not a little nervous.

Racers have to wear a suit jacket, shirt and tie, so on Saturday I sourced a tasty navy blazer with brass buttons and a frilled shirt from a charity shop.

I didn’t know what to expect when I turned up in the drizzle on Sunday morning. The team was racing four brand-new M-type 3-speeds.

The team comprised Mark from London, and Richard and Adam from the brewery in Bury St Edmunds. Greene King had spent three grand on the bikes, so there was – ahem – no pressure to perform. We agreed a team target of all finishing in the top 200, but Mark was secretly taking it more seriously than he was letting on. He’d cannily fitted clipless pedals to his bike.

Richard and Adam were Brompton virgins, but there was little time for a crash-course in unfolding techniques – and that matters. At the start, folded bikes are laid out on a numbered grid and the riders are let out of pens in groups of 100. You have to assemble your bike as fast as possible, jog to the road, jump on and ride.

The 13.1km race covers two laps of the road around Blenheim’s grounds. It was raining lightly the whole race and I was hoping this’d slow Mark down in his heavy tweed outfit. I was quietly confident of coming about 150th out of 700, maybe the same sort of time as Mark and the Bury boys.

The full results weren’t out until late in the day, so we had a few well-earned beers in the Brompton tent and I was given an impressive rider’s fee. I’d have raced in the team for nothing – they not only got me onto the grid but then plyed me with bags of beer. Surrounded by my favourite bikes and my favourite beer, I was in heaven.

The scores on the doors? The race winner came in at 22 minutes 52 seconds. The slowest was around an hour. Mark pipped me by a fair margin though: he was 192nd with a time of 29:48. I was 258th (sigh) on 31:24. Richard was 322nd on 32:23, and proving that youth ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, Adam slewed in at 476th on 37:27.

I’d like blame this on the 90 extra seconds spent helping the Bury boys get their bikes done up at the start, but the excuses don’t matter now. Although my legs didn’t cut it on the climbs, I had a brilliant time, walked away with a load of beer – and a promise of a place next year.