A soggy ride west to Hillingdon wasn’t filling me full of enthusiasm for the opening round of the Wednesday night vets series. Luckily the weather cleared and we were rewarded with a grey and windy evening, perfect for us grumbling old codgers.
A lot of the fast boys were off getting faster in Majorca so it was left to a lone Dynamo rider to take off straight from the gun, holding out till halfway. The pace was swift and steady, nobody really willing to put in too much effort. I even put in a bit of a dig and got away for a short while, the bunch engines towing the group up to me rather than jumping across.
The women’s race is now a much bigger affair and consequently much faster, we’d normally pass them twice during the race but this time we only passed them once, two laps from the end of their race. Brilliant. Cue lots of unladylike language as they came past us again to wind up for the sprint. Our race was effectively neutralized for a lap but I don’t think anyone cared. Three to go and things got a bit more interesting, the usual cut and thrust of a Hillingdon sprint. I was a bit far back but managed to get some space for a clean sprint and rolled in for 10th in age category. To be honest I’d forgotten about the age band thing and had backed off with 50m to go thinking I’d missed the points. Doh!
That put me on top of the Willesden men’s BC Ranking. But not for long…..
