Goodwood 2/3 22 August 2004

[Marek]

After last weeks third place at Goodwood I was not feeling as confident lining up against the 2nd cats. Anyhow myself and Toks got going ok. Within the first couple of laps breaks were flying off every which way you looked. It was fast and manic.

After a couple of laps a group of 8 got away. Myself and Russell from London Dynamo chased after the break and we got within 20 yards or so of the break before we started to tire and then they got away.

We sat up and waited for the peleton to sweep us back up which they kindly did.

A little further into the race I got into a second break of around 6 and we worked together well. With around 6 laps to go we seemed to have a good distance on the peleton. Then I started to feel the pain, I looked back and could see another group of about 8 chasing, they looked good so I sat up and waited for these guys to catch me. Then we swept up the rest of the earlier break. Again we worked together.

With two laps to go a couple of guys went off the front. They got a reasonable gap on us but nothing that a bit of work would not have caught. Myself and another guy got on the front and started to work to bring them back. Unfortunately no one else wanted to work to bring them back. So myself and this other guy killed ourselves on the last lap.

I had nothing left for the sprint after the earlier work and therefore I came last out of the breakaway. Not too disappointed as was a hard race and I did a lot of work so should be good training for the next one.

What is noticeable though is that the second cats races are quite a lot faster than the third cat races as you would expect. Will need to up my game I feel if I am going to be able to pose serious competition in second cat races.

Cheers

Marek....

[Toks]

Wow my first race at Goodwood! As Merek mentioned there seemed to be lots of attacks almost right from the beginning. I sat in for the first few laps just to get a feel for the race. Upfront Merek seem to be involved in every single attack. After what seemed like loads of attempts Merek and a few others finally got away (If a first you don't succeed...!). Indeed, they stayed away despite myself, Phil (ex Addiscombe, tut tut) and 3/4 other guys trying to bridge the gap. Eventually with 4/5 laps to go we became the third group and 'thru and offed' for the remainder of the race. It was tough but I enjoyed it...