Blog: September 2011

My foray into bike racing is slowly proving a success!

With one Cat 3/4 and two Cat 4 races under the bib shorts, I've amassed a huge 8pts. 2 short of the 10 I need.

Unfortunately, I'm blaming not moving up a Cat (...yet) on Conan the Barbarian and my deteriorating memory/brain. If I could poke it with a stick, I would. God only knows I've tried...well, unintentionally with a cotton bud. Kinda hurt.

It was back in the days when my mother would plant me in front of the TV as a child for a moments peace. I somehow found Conan the Barbarian (huge Arnie fan) whilst flicking through the 4 channels. The scene depicted what looked like green slime being poured down someone's ear, presumably for torture. Anyway...whilst in the shower with my ridiculous imagination, I was playing around with the old mint, green shampoo we had. That's right, same colour as the slime. Yep...in my ear. I survived, but I imagine that there's some form of long term damage that would ultimately come back and haunt me; and it did, in Crit racing and my inability to remember anything relatively important.

Anyway, the relevance of all this shit chat above is, I forgot to send a license away that would have enabled me to collect the points from last week where I finished 3rd...and could've collected 6pts. As I left it so late (intended to do it in July...muh'), I missed out on the points so have one round of points from 3 races.

Fast forward to last night, I finished 2nd...by inches. There must've been roughly a foot between 1st, 2nd and 3rd. I was awarded "The Most Aggressive Rider" during the race and given a free Power Testing session at Pro Motion Dynamics in Cardiff. Cheers for that guys!

I spent most of my time near the front and often caught myself leading, unintentionally. For the first few laps I was trying to get away...if I'm gonna drive the ~50 miles to Cardiff, I'm going to make the most of the race and attack. It was nigh on impossible to get off, despite efforts (inc a couple Cardiff Ajax riders) and a couple others; there was simply too much headwind on one section of the track.

With the race nearing the 30mins, I was taking it easy on the front and no-one would come through...a controlled pace and everyone seemed to sit behind. Then, when the counter hits 10 laps to go, the pace increased.

2 laps left and two guys went for it...they got a decent gap in but faded towards the final 1/2 lap...the bunch caught up and I decided to go for it before the two were back in the group. Fortunately, I was behind some guy built like a sail and got a free ride until he clipped the wheel of the guy next to him (no-one to blame, just racing...) and stacked it. Big time! He was ok bar some serious skin rash and some nasty looking cuts to his face/head.

Anyway, with two guys approaching the line I started picking up some time on them before squeezing through in between for 2nd place. So that's a 3rd and 2nd in two races...

One last race to get 2 points. Can't wait till Monday....!

Photos to follow (providing I can steal them from Cardiff Jiff).

In the mean time, here's some random photos I've taken in the last few weeks.