We went round anti-clockwise and it was nice and warm!
It went wrong from the beginning. We set off at a reasonable pace and as we got to the hairpin bend on the second lap the back wheel in front of me slipped and he went down. I just managed to not fall on top of him but we did clip each other. He seemed alright as he carried on the race on the next lap.
After managing to use a lot of energy just to get back onto the main bunch, I noticed someone had gone off the front. Daniel Tullet the 3x national champion in the U14 category was back. I also saw another two people in the middle trying to bridge the gap. I decided to attack on the hill and succeeded. I got onto the two riders and stuck on the back for a lap before they noticed me behind them!
I got on the front and caused a bit of pain as I used the corners to try and catch him (mostly for me as I felt very sick by this point! All that sprinting and that lactic acid had caught up on me!!). Unfortunately round the bend at the bottom of the 'hill', I had to swerve and break hard around a bunch of younger riders who seemed to take up most the line I was taking. This lead me to fall down the grass bank and I just managed to stop before going into a tree! One of the guys behind me followed but must of been going slower as he managed to turn back onto the track and carry on.
I rode back to the start and managed to get back onto the main group. The two other riders who I was with had been caught. After taking the last few laps off at the back the lactic acid still hadn't receded but on the last hill before the finish I decided to attack. It was going well until the point where I felt like someone had 'turned the engine off!'
I just lost all momentum and power. I tried to hang in but they caught and passed me. I ended up rolling through the finish; knackered, in pain, and not really knowing what had happened!![size=120]Crystal Palace Criteriums - 18th June 2013 - U16's [/size]
1 Daniel Tullett Hargroves Cycles RT-Specialized-Trant-Next-Elliott
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12 Matthew Webber Addiscombe CC
. Sounds like a bit of everything went on there. So long as you're alright and not hurt, no harm done and I expect you'll have learnt a lot more from that one race than half a dozen others before.
I thought if you come off then you get placed back in with the group you left off with, but with the lap you missed marked as 'done'.
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