As John Williams and I were racing the Thames Velo Road Race the day after. It would have been sensible to conserve the legs where possible and save them for the following day. I’m not sure if it was the caffeine gel but I was in quite a confident mood on Saturday and the legs felt OK.

The race didn’t feel very fast, there were quite a few junior riders taking part who I assumed had raced earlier in the morning and were just using this race as training. I thought it might be a good move to try and split the race up a bit but not to try too hard as I really needed to save the legs for the big road race the next day.

With 22 laps to go I found myself on my ahead of the bunch with a decent gap but I just kept finding that rather than work with me, riders were just creeping back up to me and sitting on my wheel. I quickly realised I needed to stop wasting energy and just try and make sure I didn’t miss any decent breaks.

A group of 4 riders did get away for probably around 5 laps and I was a bit annoyed with myself for messing it up but I was patient and the break did come back and I’m pretty sure I didn’t have to do much work to bring it back.

As the race came to a close the bunch really started to slow and the riding was a bit dodgy to say the least. I didn’t really fancy the idea of a bunch sprint so I was on the look out for a last ditch attempt to get in a break. I followed a wheel but ended up going off on my own again with 4 laps to go, another group formed behind me and had got away from the bunch and were working well together. I decided to sit up and wait for them in the hope that we would work together and stay away.

As it was so close to the finish, the riders didn’t seem to want to do a turn on the front and the move failed, this put me in a bit of a bad mood which then made me more determined to have a go at the sprint.

It’s quite hard to describe everything that happened as it all happened so quickly but it was really, really dodgy and I do remember taking no prisoners on the last lap to make sure I was up there. With two corners to go I was on the inside of the circuit and I thought I’d lost out as most of the bunch hurtled down the outside of me into the corner but there was a lot of wind on that corner and  I had the most shortest distance to cover so by the time we came to the finishing straight I was near the front. I think I did get blocked a little bit on the last corner as a rider moved across me but I did OK in the sprint and finished 8th.

I still need to work out how to get myself right in the front of the race for these sprint finishes so I can start to contest for the wins, hopefully that will start to happen as I get a bit fitter.

There is also a video on youtube (below), notice John Williams sitting up and having a nice chat with one lap to go. Needless to say he’d decided to save his legs for the road race the next day.

All the talk on the day was about the weather, there was a little but of sun during the day but the bursts of sun were being interrupted by great big downpours of rain.

I probably shouldn’t have raced that evening but my start of the season has been a little bit light on racing and I’d been ill the previous week so I was determined that I would race.

I had the choice of the E/1/2/3 race which offers BC points or I had the choice to race the 3/4 race which doesn’t offer points but is normally much easier and there’s normally prize money for the top ten finishers. I decided as I’d not raced much and because of the conditions, that I would be better off riding the 3/4 race just to get a race in my legs.

The race started off with around 30 riders and at a reasonable pace and there were quite a few attacks in the opening laps, the good thing about there being no BC points is that people are less likely to sit in for a sprint and actually go for glory instead. This makes the racing much more open and enjoyable.

I had one dig in the early laps but it was quite chaotic and hard to get a group organised, this is when it all started to happen and the rain started to hammer it down!

I can’t remember ever racing in anything quite like it, I could barely see where I was going, the wind was blowing us everywhere and the rain was so hard it was horrid. The weather took it’s toll on the other racers and I kept noticing that the bunch was getting smaller and smaller.

I managed to keep with it though and the rain did back off after that, there were further attacks but nothing really stuck. I kept marking the moves and just making sure I was in as many as I could but nothing worked out in the end.

The lap board came out and showed 3 to go, I can normally sprint reasonably well so I hoped that with a smaller field I would be in a good shot of getting a top ten finish. There were two London Dynamo riders still in the bunch and one of the riders looked quite good and he’d moved close to the front so I decided to follow his wheel, we came round the final corner quite quickly and despite being near the front, the London Dynamo rider lost the wheel in front of him and a gap opened up. I didn’t see this happen so I lost quite a bit of time waiting for him to kick for the sprint but it didn’t quite happen. I’d made a huge mistake of trying to use another riders wheel and there were two riders ahead of me.

I did my best to try and make up the gap but it was too far and I had to protect my position, one rider did make it past me on the line but I’d made up a few places and finished in 5th.

I wasn’t really expecting a top ten finish that night so I was quite pleased considering and it was nice to get a result after enduring the conditions.

There was a video posted on youtube afterwards which might give you some idea of how wet it was.