early on Sunday morning and headed down to get an entry on the line for the vet's race at Ellens Green.The course isn't quite pan fan, but to describe it as rolling would be an exaggeration. 7 3/4 laps of a 6 mile/10km circuit. Fortunately things had started to warm up by the start, although by the look of him, Mulberry hadn't thawed out from his ride down to the HQ
.On the 3rd lap, 2 riders went away and appeared to be working together. One was Nick Abraham - a local 1st cat private member; the other Mark Daly of Colour-Tech RT. Despite my race plan to wait for half distance before making a move (I'd already had half a lap off the front
) I went off in pursuit.So now it was 3 of us with 30 miles to stay away from the bunch. Ideally I'd have liked a couple more riders to join. The group worked reasonably well, with 2 of us doing 20-ish second turns, the other coming through and immediately off. Far better that than nothing though.
Last lap and the bunch had us in sight. I decided my best bet was to go long in the last mile, but was reeled in, and the 3 of us were still together for the 2 inclines up to the finish. 2nd was the best I could do, with Nick Abraham taking the win by half a dozen bike lengths. The bunch were only about 10-15 seconds behind by the end.
One of the great things about the LVRC races? Second place got me £20 and a bottle of red
.
