First race of the season for me was the Dulwich Paragon Winter series caat 3/4 race at the Lea Valley Velopark. My self and Rich (not the Aussie the other one who turns up to races) were on the line for Addiscombe.
Race started fairly fast, and it was a major shock for my system as i'd been off the bike for the last two weeks. Was a bit frantic and edgy in the bunch with a few 4th cats drifting a bit and a few 3rd cats showing how good they were by shouting "hold your line" every two seconds. Once I got to know the corners a bit better I could start to move up and after 20 minutes I found myself only 5 or 6 riders from the front.
As I hit the front I could see that there were two riders about 10 seconds up the road and another rider just making a break, so I went for it. Pushed the hr to over 200 bpm and within half a lap had joined up to the guy in front and together we spent another lap or two chasing down the other two. Once we were a group of 4 we worked together well to try and extend our lead, we managed to extend it to about 20-30 seconds at one point but the chase behind didn't give up. After about 20 minutes the lack of training finally showed and I couldn't keep on the pace. I tried to keep going solo but after a couple of laps the bunch caught me.
Was a spent force by then so didn't contest the sprint, Rich attempted to sprint but got boxed in and could only manage 13th or so.