Tuesday 24 April 2012

I Earned £20 Per Hour On Sunday.

No this isn't one of those 'get rich quick' spammy things before you hit the back button. Just an observation that for approximately 1 hour 30 minutes of racing on Sunday I came away with 30 quid. Not bad eh? It could have been more though as I was 3rd loser....or 4th as I prefer to call it! I am not one of those 'win or nothing' people, and always try to be pragmatic about stuff-especially racing. It's impossible to race a bike expecting to win every time you compete-there are just too many variables; the last year has taught me just how important patience is in this sport.


If I were to plot a graph of my placings this year I would see a pleasing upwards trend with each result (bar one) being higher than the previous (although to be fair that's not that difficult, with 30somethingth at Pimbo back in March and then 4th on Sunday with 3 races in between!) I have also realised that for whatever reason I am one of those people that takes a while to 'warm up' into things. That was shown last year when I got sod all points until June, then finished in early September on 48! On a separate note, I did two split days last week, with intervals Tuesday and Thursday morning followed both times by chaingangs. Give it a go if you haven't already, it's a good use of time!


So on to Sunday. It was a shorter than normal race at around 40miles (some people say they only did 38m while the Commisaire said at the briefing it was to be 41...so work that one out) so I was prepared to have to be a little more proactive than normal. Whilst recceing the course before going to sign on I came to the conclusion that the best place to get away would be on the 'climb' which connected two sides of the square making up the course. Long story short, I made a couple of other guys I knew to be strong aware of my intentions (it's hard whispering in someone's ear in the middle of a bunch let me tell you ;D), attacked on said climb on lap two and hey presto! John Agnew from the Lune club came across immediately which I was pleased about, as I knew he is a strong rider who is more than willing to work. I was even more pleased when 3 more guys bridged across to us about 1/4 of a lap later (as by that point I was, to be technical about it, breathing out of my arse), we immediately settled down into a rhythm maintaining the gap we'd made and that was when I knew we were on to something good. Everyone was willing to come through and do their share of the work and crucially, they all seemed to know what they were doing. The break I was in for a short while at Old Hutton the other week did have one or two guys that clearly didn't really know how to do through and off, and that completely f**ed up our chances there-so I was quite pleased to have forced the break, and more importantly that strong savvy riders had bridged!
Said strong savvy riders.
So thanks to the strong cooperation of the break, and also thanks to the fact that about 1/6th of the starting bunch was in said break, it was 5 of the original 6 that contested the finale (one guy having been dropped a lap or so previously). I was personally not convinced of my chances for victory, as believe it or not, it was my first proper breakaway (as in, first one that had lasted more than a lap or so) and while chaingangs supposedly replicate breakaway situations I wasn't exactly confident in being the freshest at the end. Besides, I was more interested in ensuring we stayed away-to quote Cancellara (perhaps indirectly) 'better to guarantee yourself a podium or top 5 then gamble it all away on trying to win'. Or something. Of course he was talking about Milan-San Remo, and not some poxy 3/4 race near Lancaster...anyway! So yeah, my rationale was I was willing to perhaps do more work than the others in order to guarantee a top 5 (and decent points haulage) than just sit in and hope the others were willing to carry me to the finish and that we wouldn't get caught. Unfortunately, due to the twisting nature of the course and the lack of radio communication for the organisers we had no real idea as to how much of a gap we had. As it happened it was probably around a minute-two minutes, but you never know! Count the number of times breaks have been brought back literally at the last minute due to the old 'cat and mouse' shenanigans...


An attack with about 3 miles to go by eventual winner James Knox shed one member of the break (and nearly killed me off too) but I eventually regrouped with the other two ahead and...erm...sat there in severe pain while we got back onto James's wheel. Four of us to contest the finish. The other Lune rider opened up the sprint right out of the final corner (which was a looooong way out from the finish!) which kinda killed me off. I just didn't have enough in my legs to get onto the wheels as the other two followed the effort. I had to be content with slowly winding my sprint up and hoping that somebody blew! They didn't as it happened, but I only finished a handful of seconds down at the end. All good fun! 


I should be on 9 or 10 points now, which is fewer than I'd hoped but still more than this time last year! Now to take a break from racing for a month or so and get my nose in some books. It's that time of year again.


Thanks for reading! (if you got this far)


P.S:Sorry for not posting in so long.


P.P.S: Sorry for long post.