Race 2 of the Winter Series was 85km of the Heslington circuit (7 laps for A grade). The race started fairly easily with a good pace being held to the Mt Heslignton road turn off. Although I was puzzeled as to where Chris C was - I couldn't see him in the group anywhere. Post race I discovered that he had suffered a problem with his chain and ended up starting with D grade. He rode is way through the grades and was about to catch A when we picked up the pace. I think that in the end he just sat on the back of B grade.
Anyway I wasn't to know this - so back in the A grade race I had tried to stay in the first quarter of the group. As we started up the first climb at the beginning of Mt Heslington road I was swamped by slower climbers so as soon as I had a chance I got to the front and rode tempo. After a short amount of time I realised that I had no one behind me and that the group was a wee way back. Not wanting to get dropped on the downhill I carried on - expecting the group to come back together down the other side. As I started down the valley I heard a shout and was joined by Chris N, Paul Odlin and Robin Reid. I managed to get on the back of them and we were joined by 5 others - Dean Fulton, Brendon Neylon, David Ayre, Grant Stirling & Kieron (actually Grant and Kieron may have been in a breakaway from the start - there was someone out there but I didn't see who it was). The group worked togther with Chris and Paul doing the bigger turns - I was struggling again to match their speed on the flat. We stayed together but on the next lap Grant dropped out. At the start of the climb I went to the front and rode tempo again. The sun made it hard to see if there was anyone behind me so it was only when Dean shot past just before the steepest part and was later followed by the rest that I realised that they had gapped me off the front. I chased but was unable to catch them and they remained tantalisingly just out of reach for the remainder of the lap.
Riding by myself into the headwind wasn't a whole lot of fun but I couldn't see the remainder of our group behind me so I kept going. I picked up a couple of juniors and towed them to the end of their race and then finally - halfway through lap 4 I saw Brendon. He had looked to be struggling earlier but two of us had to be quicker than just riding by myself. I did the pulls on the uphill legs and he did longer turns on the flats where he was pretty strong. At the start of our 4th lap we say Dean and David standing at the finish line - they had pulled out. We kept our pace going and still couldn't see the rest of the chasing group behind us - we also couldn't see the rest of the guys ahead. At the top of the climb on lap 6 we caught Kieron - he had stopped and was chatting with Dean and David. Going into our last lap we were pretty focused on not getting caught and put in everything that we had. I started to get some twinges of cramp but thankfully they went away. Brendon eased up at the end and let me cross first - he was really thankful for the help but really had been just as strong.
We finished 2 minutes behind Paul, Chris and Robin but still managed to keep over 3 minutes ahead of the rest of the group - not bad at all.
I guess the lesson to be learnt (apart from getting stronger for the flats) is that sometimes perserverance pays off. I went from having a chance in the initial break of finishing in the top 10(at worse) to finishing in the top 5 - not bad for a little bit of suffering but still a long way off from riding with the big boys.
This coming weekend is going to be hard - 100km of the Woollastons circuit on Saturday and then we have the 6hr MTB on the Sunday. I think I'll need a rest after that.
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