Steve was also there and on our practise laps we saw that the course went trough a track with some gravel through the private estate park (very nice), with a few tight turns, but not much climbing except the run to the finish. It looked decently fun and a nice change from the usual. Was likely to be fast and furious with original distance of 80km even further reduced to 64km. I decided to throw caution to the wind and attack or follow moves as much as possible. Did a lot of that (which the photographer doesn't seem to realise as he was standing near the finish, and attacks generally launched up the climb, but then were caught at the end of the long, straight mostly downhill on the main road, as this was into the wind and not great at all for staying away). Also active were Marcus NP, Michael Coyle the Brighton vet, a CS Grupetto, Robert Moore, Tony from Banjo, and a few more.
Once a few of us had pushed up the hill and seemed to ease off at the top, so I pushed hard on the run to the 150 degree hairpin onto the main road, just to keep the pace going, but found myself alone with a gap, and soon joined by Calland. We stayed away for half a lap but as I was starting to get worried about being able to keep up with him, such was his strength, we got caught. Bit later on the expected rainstorm came down on us, pretty heavily, and slowed down the pace a tad due to the tricky corners and narrow gravelly path. A group of about 7 of us managed to get a gap and got into through and off, Calland was in and seemed determined to make this one at last stick.
I think at that point Keith was suffering and thought our break would stick and so called it a day. Steve had abandonned a bit earlier too. To my surprise though we got caught again. Calland was nursed to the top of the hill by McNamara and I took their wheel which was a relief as I was fearing getting dropped up it. Straight after Calland attacked again, as I was still catching my breath and focusing on not getting dropped, but to no avail. With two to go Marcus said he was going to attack at the base of the hill, I was going to go with him but we didn't manage to get to the front in time, and others also went hard there, so we had to just follow the move.
And then on the final lap Calland attacked from the inside just before the turn off the main road. No one followed or chased. I did a bit of tempo chasing for a bit but was not intent on doing all the work only to be swamped at the finish. So I then let a few go past, but not too many seeing how narrow the track was. Calland went on to win solo (and yes we did realised he was away and not lapped
), I took 4th wheel into the final hairpin, and maintained - just - that position up the hill. Looking back the pack was fairly depleted! One guy had punctured literally with 500m to go and understandly not too happy about it. It was now warm and sunny, in contrast to the wetness of a few moments ago. So no win but another few points to make I think 131 now. Kind of wish now I'd focused on getting a 1st cat license (200 pts) this season, as I ended up not doing a lot of road racing till about June really.http://www.londoncyclesport.com/index.p ... &Itemid=86
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