London League Cyclo-cross - Hog Hill Sat 28th Sept 2013

London League Cyclo-cross at Hog Hill drew out two North Roaders, John McDowall and Dave Kiely, to race in the vets category.  

However, first off was Joe Kiely in the under 12s.  A good start left him in contention, and with a gap over the rest of the field, with two other riders.  Things looked good for an exciting finish before some enthusiastic  cornering left Joe on the deck before a rear wheel puncture effectively ended his race although he still manfully finished the race by running the last two laps.

Dave and John are not on the grid for London League so started at the back of the field.  Both rode strongly on what was an ‘intricate’ course design.  Dave secured an early lead that John worked hard to narrow and eventually close about three-quarters of the way into the race.  A dramatic couple of finishing laps looked on the cards between the battling ‘team mates’ before John entered the dreaded downward cyclo-cross spiral - a mistake left a gap, pushing harder to make up for the error led to a bigger mistake increasing the gap again,  before  pushing REALLY hard led to the inevitable fall and ended any chance of making better progress in catching the Kiely Dog.

Dave finished in 29th place in 59.24 with John in 32nd in 59.41 with 61 riders starting.