Getting up to date

As is always the case the more stuff you have to write about the less time there is to write about it and with the season underway i haven't been keeping up to date with the blog.

As Dave mentioned the first events of the road season where on the 23/24th of February. On the Saturday it was round 1 of the Lake and Lancs sporting courses time trial series (L&L SPOCO. The wet and windy conditions fared up a bit by the time first riders got underway at the 2 p.m. start time and we where left with relatively dry roads but extremely strong crosswinds. With myself, Richard and Vicky all of the lighter persuasion i dispensed with my disc and put a shallower front wheel, Vicky and Richard had to lose there deep sections completely or risk ending up in a ditch, so there are some disadvantages to being a fly weight!

I went off an early seed, 10th out of the 80 riders on the start sheet. My ride didn't feel great, stale from a long winter and a lot of the time i was prevented from getting the power down by the ferocious crosswind. The most frustrating part of the ride was having to come to a dead stop behind a couple of cars on a narrow bridge and loosing all my speed before the steep climb after the bridge. As expected Vicky and Richard suffered in the strong winds with Vicky being blown on to verge on one occasion.

My time stood until Tim Lawson (team SIS) bettered it by only six seconds compounding my frustration over having to stop behind the cars. So 2nd overall was a decent result but it would have been nice to kick things off with a win.

Sunday the 24th brought more rain and another trip to Lancishire for the Clayton Velo Spring handicap, the traditional season opener in the north. With 11 Rapha Condor/Recycling riders on the start sheet the overall was a forgone conclusion so i decided to concentrate on the prime sprints on the early laps of the short circuits, i duely attacked off the line and managed a 36 mile break in the process of which i secured the 3 primes and caught the 2 handicap groups that went off ahead of me. Adrenaline and enthusiasm got the better of me and having caught Dave i had delusions of organising a 2 up effort to stay away for the rest of the race distance. This was not to be as the pursuing elite riders upped the tempo and quickly reeled us in. With two laps to go my earlier efforts started to demand payment and the sharp changes of pace saw both myself and Dave dropped from the lead bunch, we both eased round the remaining laps to complete race distance and qualify for our Prime sprint prizes. A nice touch to the day was Vicky, acting as race support on this occasion, was at the finish line so we could bail straight into the van without the cold wet ride back to the race HQ. As it turned out Rapha Condor/Recycling had taken the first 6 places, the race being won by former track world champion and premier calender winner Chris Newton.

All in all not a bad start to the year but still plenty of work to do!