Palace 30th June

[Snoop Doug]

Good work feller!

[Andrew G]

Well done. As you only live round the corner, and then the chatting about bit pre-race, you're probably not warmed up at the start which is why you feel stronger later on.

How about once you've signed in clearing off for a warm up in the local area before the 3/4 race.

[Wal]

Well, that was another hard lesson in crit racing.

For the first few laps I found myself in the middle of the bunch, where I wasn't at all happy. The pedalling effort was easy but I'm just not used to riding in such close proximity to so many other riders, and several hair-raising near-touches and evasive manoeuvres had me resolving to get out of the traffic. So when everyone was soft pedalling up the hill on about lap 4 I jumped to the front. I stayed in the top 10 for pretty much the remainder of the race, several times finding myself hanging out the front for more than a lap at a time. Hard work, but at least I didn't feel under constant threat of being involved in a mass pile-up. As the bunch started to sprint towards the top of the hill on the final lap I was about to go around the right of the guy in front of me when his chain jumped off, forcing me to brake hard and swerve to avoid him. That pretty much ended my race and I cruised in behind the main bunch.

A good evening's racing, but a bit frustrating to have done so much work for it all to come to nothing. That's road racing, I suppose! I really need to learn how to read the peloton, figure out who's strong and learn from their tactics. Unlike mtb racing, just going flat out from start to finish doesn't work!