Frantic in Frant 2,3,4

[siwickm]

Another exciting weekend of racing. A number of Accers and ex Accers racing over at Frant in the SERRL.

Brian Tidey, Max Ramirez and myself from ACC and John Sadler and David Palmer for whatever they call themselves 'sport fall'.

The course was quite hilly with a number of longish hills and also a really long straight road which was a constant drag.

I sat in close to the back and after the first lap, two fifths of our group of riders were out the back with Monsiers Tidey and Palmer preferring to take the hills at their own pace.

After two laps of the 20km circuit I decided to have a go at the front to speed it up and see if I could tempt some people to get away. I got a bit off the front and then Sadler and Ramirez joined me. Then we hit a hill, eeek, my legs told me to calm down and I went back through the peleton into my earlier position, sitting on the back. The same thing with Max, he came backwards pretty fast as well. Good ol' Sadler did not seem too phased and he stayed up close to the front looking pretty relaxed.

For the remainder of the 100km race I sat close to the back, normally I would not recommend this but this circuit seemed to be not be too hard out of the corners etc so the back was actually quite a nice place.

On the final descent I decided to move up to the front to get myself into a good position for the sprint. Just before the last corner before the final hill I was sitting pretty in 3rd spot, a big crack was heard from below my legs. My legs then stopped moving, eeek, my bottom bracket gave up the ghost and I could no longer turn the pedals.

What a bummer, about 1.5km left to go and the bike gave up (not me for a change). Apparently the sprint for the line was pretty hard core on the hill, John Sadler managed to get 2nd in the sprint, which was about 8th overall as there was a breakaway. Max was up there but not quite in the points.

I really enjoyed the race, was a really big field with 80 riders at the start and good to have such a long circuit so you don't see the same thing too many times. Next week my bike will be fixed so watch out.

Cheers

Marek......

1 Matthew Miles Team Marie Curie/JD Cycles
2 David Miller API @ 10 secs
3 Robin Basford Ride Beyond @ 1m
4 Kevin Tye Storck UK s/t
5 Daniel Felstead Dulwich Paragon s/t
6 Mark Arnold API - group at unknown time
7 Ivan Jordan Storck UK
8 John Sadler TFN/Sportful
9 Caesar Coco Downland Cycles
10 Andrew McPherson Liphook Cycles
11 Mark Powell Downland Cycles
12 Phillip Jones Cituhub
13 Sam Fensterheim De Laune CC
14 Ben Johnson London Phoenix
15 David Struel London Dynamo/Cycefit.co.uk

[Dr Frigo]

Such bad luck!

Keep up the reports - I know too that when no one is commenting it can feel like no one's even bothering to read them, but looking at the number of views it clearly isn't the case!

[Toks]

After no access to the forum for more than a week I'm just reading through all the reports!...I like your style Marek, you're determined to be the perfect all rounder - seeking out hilly races whenever you can. Keep it up dude