Goodwood 3rd Cat Race 15/08/04

[Marek]

80km race, 20laps of the reasonably flat Goodwood circuit. Wind picked up and a bit of rain at the start of the race, but nothing too bad.

There were three of us from ACC, Neil, Richard and myself. As the race got under way Neil was well up at the front getting involved in any breaks and having a good go at bringing back anything that looked too dangerous.

Most of the early breaks did not look too dangerous and although one of them that I got away in early on was working well the overall level of the riders in the break were not strong enough to stay away.

With around 7 laps to go a dangerous looking break got away so Neil, myself and another guy got on the front of the peleton and dragged them back. This took a lot of work and so I sat in the bunch for the next lap to recover.

As I was sitting back another break went. This consisted of some rather strong looking riders. They were getting away so I decided to make a break for it. I launched myself off the front and broke away from the peleton and after a big effort caught the break of around 10.

We started to do a very efficient through and off and managed to pull away further from the peleton. With four laps to go we were working hard and everyone was intent on staying away so it worked really well.

On the last lap we started to play a bit of cat and mouse as we worked up for the sprint, we had enough time on the peleton to slow up a bit. The group got spread out on the final hill and I worked myself up into about 4th place. As we came into the final straight got my sprint going and managed to get into 3rd place over the line.

Really enjoyed the race, first time have been in such a good breakaway and pretty pleased had enough left to get away from the remainder of the break in the final stages.

Neil and Richard came through in a second breakaway which had pulled away from the Peleton in the final lap. Excellent race guys, hard luck to Neil for not being in the successful breakaway as he had worked his butt off earlier on and had been in nearly every other break.

Cheers

Marek...