Wivelsfied Handicap Race

[Marek]

http://www.londoncyclesport.com/reports ... ndi_8.html

This must have been the hardest work I have ever done in a race to get 12th place.

There were only around 36 riders that turned up and Keith Butler put us into 5 groups. I normally go off with the third cats, but for some unknown reason Keith decided to stick me in a group with a couple of very handy second cats. The group I was with set off maybe 5 or so minutes after the first group and about 2 mins after the group with the third cats in.

We set off and it was evident straight away that this was going to be no picnic. We started with 6 in our group, after the first lap two of our group had been sent to the showers (Caveman was one suffering with a bit of flu or something so he did not last long).

We were left with four. On the first lap I managed to come through to help, on the second lap I started to miss turns. On the third lap I was literally hanging on for grim death. The three others were setting a great pace. After the third lap one of the other riders started to suffer and he also was missing turns. So basically Paul Allen and Nigel Carpenter were doing all of the work and we were sitting in just trying to get our breath back. These guys just did not seem to need to take a break, they were absolutely blasting it. On the fourth lap we caught up with the rest of the riders which had come together, thankfully the scratch group had not managed to catch us. Once into the slower group I took the opportunity to spend a bit of time recovering. But then before I knew it Nigel and Paul had gone along with a few others. I had completely missed the break. This was a bit upsetting after all the effort to stick to these guys wheels so I went to the front of the peleton and did my best to pull as much as I could. This was not working well as a guy from Pearson was sitting on the front slowing it down and the others did not seem to have the legs to chase.

Ah well, managed to get up there in the sprint. I tell you though, if you had asked me earlier in the race on about lap 3 what would be my target for the race, I think getting around without being dropped and still being able to talk and walk at the end would have been my answer. This was the best training I have done for ages, next time I will request to ride with the faster riders.

Cheers

Marek....

[Toks]

Yikes! a lovely warm up race, just what you need when you haven't raced for two weeks. Well done mate

[Marek]

Cheers mate, it was 25mph average speed over a circuit with a lot of drags and a couple of small hills, this is the kind of speed I would expect at Goodwood in a 3rd cat race.

See you have been up there in the results recently Toks, keep it up. I will be back racing in a few weeks time when I get back from France so we should see if we can all hook up.

Cheers

Marek...