Down in the team bus today were Andrew G, Paul T, myself and Keith Wahman who very kindly agreed to supply support for us agreeables.
So we had a good group of ACC racers Paul, Andrew, Aoden, Mark, and me.
Well todays race was a big one with lots of elite mens teams from far and ride racing with us, I was gridded to the front row, how cool is that so IU was lined up with all these big guns. Looked behind me on the starting grid and it went back a dozen rows with over 140 riders in the main race.
I got a flyer of a start along the long stretch of tarmac that led us up 1km to the rough stuff, I sprinted and got to the head of the pack and was leading into the first corner
. Then we boomed straight into the thick moist ground that just sucked the power out of our wheels, through the boggy section and down through the fields at the far end of the circuit.some 2 riders just sprung off the front of the pack and disapeared up and out of sight, I've never seen speed like that in cross it was awesome, I was in the next group and the pace was fast, well it was flat out as far as i was concerned and I was having to sprint for all my wiorth out each and every corner to stay in there.
A few laps of this and I had to ease off a bit and try get my own pace going which was a little more accommodating. I could see a group of 5 riders coming up in my wing mirror containing Kevin Knox and Matt Seaton so when they latched on to me I nestled myself in there.
For me this group seemed a little too relaxed so I got on the frond and wound it up for a lap or so, this seemed to have the effect of whittling the group down quite considerably, I kept asking the otheres why they were panting so much but didn't get much of a reply at all.
3 laps to go the 2 leaders lapped me to my suprise, this was just as I put in a huge attack on my group up the tarmac, I even overtook Jody Crawforth and Ian Feld so unlapped myself for a brief period.
with a lap to go just me Matt and another left as Kevin had messed up the boggy section, I spun in the little ring for half the lap then cluncked it onto th big ring and launched and attack to get away from them, this seemed to have a great effect and I sprinted up the finishing straight on my own for 10th position.
Got a serious hacking cough now from all that effort, I felt like I really should have been able to stay with that group just ahead of me which contained Andy Warterman Dulwich paragon who was on a roll today and Stuart Jones london phoenix whos a possible league threat.
Sylv even rode down to cheer us all on with a couple of others, a good day of sport was had by all and everyone really enjoyed the suffering and punishment, bring on next week.
) for this year and really enjoyed the race. I thought the circuit was good, there was a really boggy section that become very tough later on once you turned off the tarmac finishing straight but I managed to pedal through it every lap by sticking it in a bigger gear and giving it a lot of welly. There was a couple of comedy face plants in the mud in front of me including once by one of the leading riders which was very funny. A load of cack was building up by my rear brake and just in front or the rear wheel by the bottom bracket. After the race Keith pointed to the rear cage too and I hoiked a great compressed slab of mud out of it, God knows how the chain kept running through that lot.
