Spring Chicken Road Race - 12th March

Today was my first ever road race on the open roads, having only done criteriums and time trials until now I was nervous and excited to see what this new style of racing would be like!!

 Me and my mate Max waiting to begin!

The course was 11 miles round, gently rolling all the way round, with one sharp climb each lap. It was 4 laps, so 46 miles in total. We started on a downhill section with a tailwind, so after less than a mile, all of us juniors were spinning our legs at 130+ rpm, being gear restricted can be very telling sometimes!! Anyway the race soon settled into a steady pace and whilst avoiding the many potholes around the course, I was feeling good and felt like I could give everything in the final sprint. It came down to the final lap and going up the hill with 5k to go, I gained around 10 places and took up a position to the right of the peloton, the fast tailwind section saw another small split in the bunch, but i remained in the front group, and fancied my chances going into the last 3km.

With about 500m to go however, there was a clash of wheels in the middle of the group and a huge number of riders went down, the sound of expensive carbon on the tarmac is not nice at all!! One bike came bouncing int my path and pushed me onto the grass verge, so began my cyclo-cross race!! Bouncing over ditches, bumps in the grass and managing to somehow get back onto the tarmac, I had obviously lost my leadout, the race was already over, and there was a pile of bikes and bodies behind me, so I just trundled up to the line with the other stragglers who managed to avoid the pile-up. I ended around 30th place.

Special mention goes out to team-mate Cameron Foster who managed to get 5th place in the sprint, a great effort from him!!

Cam taking 5th!!!

Overall I was very happy with my race, and feel I could have been in with a chance for a top 10 finish had the crash not happened. Hopefully I can get some points in the next one!! I would also like to give a mention to the rider who went down badly in the crash, one guy stayed down quite a while and suffered from concussion and a battered body, hope you have a quick recovery!!

Until next time.

Ciao.

 Pushing on at the top of the climb!!