Latest Results - July 2008
Portsmouth Crits, Mountbatten Centre - July 2nd 2008
Went straight from work and arrived early. The sun was out and the track dry without a breath of wind. I felt pretty good mentally although a little tired from my previous days efforts commuting home at an average of 21 mph for 1 hour and 30 mins.
30 riders started and it was not long before the first attack happened. This was going to be a night of attacks. I jump and got onto it. There were 5 of us away but this did not last. The bunch were not having any of it as their legs were still fresh like ours. For the next 25 minutes there were about another 6 or 8 breaks all of which I was in and all these came back to the bunch. I was just thinking that this race would come down to a bunch sprint at the end and was preparing myself to recover and seek out a wheel to follow for the sprint when another attack went with 3 riders. I sat in and watched until the rider in front of me decided to go so I went with him and we chased the 3 up the road as the bunch watch us. It took us a fair while of hard work to get on terms with the 3 away. As we hooked onto the leading 3 the pace went up. The leading 4 were all tight together with myself 5th wheel and on the ragged edge with about one and a half bike lengths between me and the 4th wheel I felt the weakest there. The guy on the front was towing the 5 of us around lined out at a pace of about 25/26 mph yes by himself. I was now 2 bike lengths behind the 4th wheel and struggling. I looked ahead to see that the 4th wheel had a gap too so only 3 riders riding close together now.
This pace was breaking up the group and that would be to the benefit of the bunch. Since getting on no one had done a turn other than the guy on the front who by now I had decided was damn strong. I decided some how I needed to get around the fading 4th wheel pretty quick so dug deep and sprinted around him and straight onto the 3rd wheel. I spent the next few minutes recovering when I noticed that he too had let a gap appear. So same trick again I guess....... With my body hurting, my legs screaming it was a good thing my head was strong as all else wasn't. I did it again. Now 3rd wheel and hanging on for dear life. We were about 300m ahead of the bunch. I peeped overt my shoulder to see how far the other 2 were behind us. Gone..........Blown.......... and back in the bunch. Oh.... Ok.... so I was not the weakest then, we were all hurting I guess.
The 3 of us stayed together for a while until the front rider got bored and put the hammer down. I was on my limit and decided it would be a bad thing if I went with him. Thinking he would blow and fade I gambled that my only chance of staying away from the bunch was with the other rider behind me. As the leader moved away, we were each taking a turn on the front and resting every other turn. Unfortunately his turns were slower at 21/22 mph and my turns were at 25/26 mph. The leader had now lapped the field and join back into the bunch. The bunch was still 300m behind but not for long. They decided to reel us in, slowly but surely. They started to pull about 50m back every lap. Something in me made me think my racing colleague was holding back something for the sprint at the end. When the bunch were about 100m behind I shouted to my racing colleague to dig in deep and put some hard efforts in as we were nearing the end of the race. "Better to die trying than lose doing 90%" I said. Giving him credit he did up the pace the next lap 25/26 mph and I did 2 laps at 27/28 mph.
Well the both of us were pretty knackered now for those efforts and as I looked over my shoulder to see the damage, I noticed we had opened the gap back up to about 300m. Job Done! Now it was going to be just the 2 of us with a sprint to decide who will pick up 2nd place. On the last lap I positioned myself on his wheel and decided to drop off 2 bike lengths to wind up my sprint earlier than normal as it usually starts at full pace just before the bend. As I drew up along side him he made no effort to try to sprint after me and I went over the line about 5 seconds ahead grabbing 2nd place. Chuffed to bits I was.
We both congratulated each other for the work we did to stay away and he was really chuffed with his 3rd place too. He admitted that he had nothing left and had drained himself totally to stay way. I was wrong in thinking he was saving himself. How could I !!!!!!!
Another great evening hard work paid off at last. My body ached from head to toe - my legs screaming with pain but I then realised how hard I had worked. Soon afterwards I found out that the guy who won it was a TT specialist and does a 19 min 10 sec for a 10 mile TT!! He was by far the strongest rider there last night and very impressive too. Wish I could do what he did, tow us around lap after lap and then put the hammer down and get back onto the bunch by himself. Great work.
I clocked the average speed at 38.9 kph.