Tuesday 17 March 2009

First Win

Sorry It has been a long time since my last blog but I was waiting for something decent to talk about and now I have. Training has been quite vigorous and I have just finished a three week set of hard training and I have had my first two consecutive days of the bike since I can remember. On Saturday just gone I raced in the first of the Beyond Crits at Hillingdon and before the race I was hoping for a podium finish considering I was at DHL sprint School the previous days (Great Fun). But as I stopped at the start finish line I realized there were a lot of people who had previously beaten me in round 10 of the Winter Series where i came a disappointing and shocking 7th but I made mistakes in that race and i made sure I wasn’t to make those errors again.

The First few laps were quick with the race being split up into various groups because of the differences n age and strength. But there were constant attacks from a specific Palmer pack rider who constantly attacked from the back and would normally be caught as every Hillingdon Slipstreamer in the race would sprint until the break was caught. However after these constant attacks with 1/2 a lap to go he tried his luck again and he gain himself a strong 20m lead with 350m to go. I was lying in 3rd wheel at the time (I Think) and I buried myself from the bottom of the final corner and caught the Palmer Park Rider and I had around 100m to hold out. I just dug deep into the reserves and I buried myself and I could see a rider up on my right side so I used the tactics Valverde taught me from watching the liege Bastogne Liege and stuck my elbows out and pushed him nearer to the barriers although perfectly safe i don't think he was as confident as I was going into the sprint. Well I held on and beat my fellow team mate Tom Jameson by about half a bike length and he was on my wheel coming up to the finish but he was unable to get past. So I was delighted and on Checking my HR monitor my Max for the race was 203bpm. So in the end it was a good show beating 5 people who had beaten me earlier in the year and an IN Gear 1, 2. Just got to live up to the same next week.



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