world team persuit champion was there jo rowsell (she went off with 3rd cats?!?!?)
there was a MASSIVE turn out for the race, with several groups.
i held myself back to the 2nd to last group- made of dave kennett, marcus brueton, nigel carpenter, andy davies, adam, and myself. behind was the scratch group chocoblock full of 1st cats and elites like gary dodd and ex pros like ben wilson.
because of the amount of groups and the small circuit we were only given about 30 seconds headstart from the scratch group, and after a lap they had got us. we now had a super strong group, unfortunately adam got dropped round about this time- though he had riddon up to the race.
i still felt super strong so i kept up the through and off, only missing a turn once or twice. it was pretty tiring, especially as one of gary dodds team mates who was coming through in front of me would not ease up and i would have to dig in to stay on his wheel sometimes.
pretty swiftly we started to catch groups, and we would head straight to the front of them to keep pounding away. when we caught the group 2 ahead of us i hesitated moving to the front as i was starting to feel the lactic acid building up, but a sharp push up the back side from i think andy davies sent me straight up to the front
a couple of times i managed to get off the front for a bit with gary dodd, he put in a couple of attacks and for some reason i went with them along with a couple of others, but they didnt come to anything and just wore me out.
with a couple of laps to go we bought back the last group, and the through and off reduced in ferocity, but a fair old pace was still being tapped out.
with 2 laps to go the attacks started coming, and again i went with a few of them but nothing was getting away the pace was too high.
on the last lap it died down a bit, but i was in a bad position and pretty swamped in, so i didnt get a chance to sprint it out and just cruised over the line.
a bit dissapointed with the result, but got some good training out of it by managing to keep on going in the through and off.
the average speed was an incredbile 28.4!
cheers
stu
or mph 