Big Events 7 - 3rd Only 25/10/14

Thu 30 Oct 2014

Lying just three points shy of my second category licence, this was - with any luck - to be my final race of the season. After a few laps of the Hillingdon circuit to familiarise myself with the course, I got up in the front line of a fairly small field and after a quick briefing from the commissaire we were off!

The start of the race felt like quite an easy pace to me, so I was sitting comfortably around sixth or seventh position. A break of three got up the road after around twenty minutes, but apart from one guy shouting at everyone to do turns, there was no real sense of urgency in the bunch to get back up to them. After around thirty five minutes my breakaway companion (Tom) from the Maldon CC road race got a bit of a gap with one other going past the finishing line. Knowing he was pretty nippy from my previous bunch race outing, I decided that it was probably worth getting over to them to see if it would pan out well.

After a brief effort to bridge we immediately started to work well together, getting up with the other three breakaways within a few laps. The six of us got into a good rhythm and put quite a gap into the main field, seeing it grow each lap as we came around the kink in the circuit. One punctured with a few to go and due to some confusion with his lap out, he didn’t get to join us again. The remaining five of us ploughed on though, with the lap boards now appearing at the finish each go round. I put in a bit of an attack a little after two to go; to see if I could shed any of the others in order to help get Tom a couple more points at the finish as he too was sitting just off promotion. It succeeded in dispatching one rider but the other two stayed with us.

It slowed down a bit after that, with me not wanting to pull all the way to the finish, but the others not wanting to do too much as it was probably fairly obvious I was feeling strong. The dropped rider came back up to us and after a few short pulls by the other guys I went back to the front for the final half a lap to the finish, although not pushing too hard as I knew we had plenty of distance to the peloton. I swung wide on the final right hand corner, letting Tom and one other through the inside as they opened their sprints. I was quickly onto their wheels and after shifting up a couple of gears I duly put in a big kick with two hundred metres to go. I passed both somewhat comprehensively and kept the gear turning to the finish line for my second bunch racing win of the season. Second place, with a pretty impressive sprint, was a fifteen year old trackie who might well have got the better of me were it not for his junior top gear of just 52/16! I got ten points to move me comfortably into second cat, while Tom ended up fifth, which I was happy to hear still gave him enough points to get promoted too.

A couple of weeks off are now the plan before I start to do some winter miles, which will hopefully have me going even better come the 2015 season!

Jobe Usher

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