grass track

bank holiday weekend was spent pursuing another cycling interest, grass track, on sunday the action was at bitts park in carlisle with the womens national 400m championships, and the mens 800m series, with other events. the 800m was a success for me coming second in my heat to former national champion ben elliott although with two going through to the final i was happy with this. the result was repeated in the final with myself and ben elliot riding away from the rest of the field, and i was beat in the sprint. the next event was the 500m scratch race, this proved too short a distance for me to be able to cope with and finished 3rd in my heat failing to make the final. event 3 was the 1500m in which i won my heat by a fair distance, this was repeated in the final, with me winning the heat in a sprint finish. confidence riding high from the win i entered the 5000m a bit too enthusiastically and eventually blew up with 3 laps to go, lesson learned from spending far too much time on the front i decided to sit in on the devil and ended up pushed to the back of the field where i was beaten in a few laps and taken out.

mondays racing at richmond for me didnt involve the 400m as this wasnt really my distance, instead i decided to focus on the national 8000m series, after an incredibly fast and hard race due to the excellent track the group split, with 5 riders breaking away, i was left on my own to ride round, after chasing hard for several laps i realised catching them was impossible and settled to keeping the chasing riders at a safe distance, eventually finishing 6th and leaving me confident about the national championships in a few weeks time, after missing the northwest road champs due to illness/work commitments im itching to get back to road racing, im sick of going round in circles.....