Essex Roads Spring Road Race 3/4 27th April 2014

4th for Jobe at the Essex Roads Spring Road Race 3/4 27th April 2014

At the Fleche Welwyn on the 13^th of April I had felt great, but my tactics left something to be desired, doing too much on the front, cramping up in the sprint and going from about 5^th wheel in the bunch down to a somewhat disappointing 28^th place in the space of a few hundred metres. Happily though a top 10 at Hog Hill on Monday followed by a PB at Brickendon suggested I’d be on for a good one for the Essex Roads event.
I spent the first two and a half laps (of four and a half) sat at the back of the peloton. A break of three went up the road and stretched the gap to 30 seconds in that time but there was a strong compliment from Glendene and Southend CC’s who brought them back fairly soon. I spent the penultimate lap slowly moving up to the front third or so, feeling fairly comfortable pretty much all the time. Anticipating a fight down to the last corner before the climb to the finish I spent the first half of the last lap moving slightly further ahead to around 7th in the bunch, with three Glendene riders keeping a high pace on the front. This proved a wise decision as I was able to latch onto people moving up on the right to maintain a good position. As I expected it was manic on the run in to the finish, with riders often on the other side of the road, one in particular deciding it was a great time to come round the bunch and attack even though there was an oncoming car about 50 metres ahead  of us. I narrowly avoided being taken out by a VW campervan coming the other way after getting pushed out and no gap opening up to get back in. I really fought for positions in this period though as I knew I wanted the outside line on the final corner to get a clearer run up the finishing hill.
Coming round the corner it was lined out on the left with just one rider ahead of me on the right hand side. As the gradient lifted he started to slow slightly so I put in a little dig to get round him, hoping to slot into 5^th or 6^th in the line. However with no gap to get into and still carrying some speed from coming round, I duly put the hammer down with just over half a mile to go. I caught and passed the last attacker, flew down the small decent in the middle of the climb and had a reasonable gap coming into the final left then right hand bend, back uphill now at getting on for 10%. The finish wasn’t much further than the right hander but I was tying up big time and getting slower by the second. I ended up being passed about 20 metres from the line, with another two riders also coming by in the closing metres. I held on for fourth place though, which I’m pretty happy with considering it was only my second race on the open road, it’s just a shame it was so agonisingly close to a win!
Certainly much better tactics than last time as I had barely had my nose in the wind the whole race until that last half mile and although my original plan had been to wait for the sprint, I was only just caught so the attack didn’t seem to be a particularly bad idea anyway!

Jobe Usher