29th
More Racing
Had another race at Hillingdon this Saturday. The weather was lovely when I left home, bright sunshine and just a little wind. It was raining at the circuit but only lightly and it stopped before the race.
The race started as most races seem to with someone going mental from the start which leads to a nervous and quick couple of laps. Everything settled down and we just rode our bikes for a bit. A break went away but with only two people it was always coming back. With a few laps to go there were three people up the road, a guy attacked the bunch to bridge and I sucked wheel all the way over. The 5 man break looked good, we didn’t have far to go and everyone looked strong.
This is where it gets weird.
A guy that had been lapped (twice) was allowed back into the race. He then dragged the rest of the field back up to us for some unknown reason. So we are all back together, the counter attack went and I got in it but in a crap position for the corner. I lost 10 places in about 2 seconds and that was the end of that.
Before we got to the end of the lap I explained to the guy that he shouldn’t be in there and should get to the back. “I got an earful of abuse and was told it wasn’t the TDF”.
My concern is safety, a person who is lapped should be taken out of the race before the last laps, we were told that at the start. A person who cannot win has different motivations to everyone else. Someone sitting up in the middle of a bunch doing 30 something mph can cause a crash, someone trying to get out of the way of the bunch could cause a crash.
To the outside world it might have appeared as sour grapes, but I value my teeth not my BC points.
