Barcombe 3rd's: If only...

Freedom is a role seldom followed by the multitude (Wattstax, 2001)

Its June so there should be some sun, right? Well it certainly showed up on Sunday - it was a glorious summer morning. With my Smithfield crit adventure only 12 hours old it was with okayish legs that I met up with Phil Murrell from Finsbury Park CC at 6.30am. With the bikes loaded up in his car we began a 70+ mile trip towards Brighton...

Barcombe is one of Surrey League's feisty little gems out in West Sussex. In short its a lumpy bugger and definitely not a circuit for flatland specialists. So at 9.30am us thirty -five or so 3rd cat blokes began the 6 laps of the 48mile road race .

The pace was fairly civilised from the get-go but after five minutes of racing there was the inevitable attack. The ever talkative big Irish fella, David Walls, began a running commentary on how long or when the guy would be brought back. I'm not sure what he's final guess was but the escapee was back with us after almost a lap later.

At the start of the 2nd lap I rolled to the front and must have pressed a bit harder on the pedals than everyone else - suddenly I had a 30-40 metre gap. A quick glance back before powering around a couple of corners and the bunch were completely out of sight. Mmmm... now what? I kept the pressure on for another fifteen minutes and when I next looked back I saw a Bayeaux Landscapes rider bridging across. I kept things steadish and eventually he was on so I raised the tempo once again while he took a breather on my wheel.

I didn't know it at the time but it was Joshua Cunningham a Junior who had won ahead of Garry Dodd (Sigma Sports) in one of the Surrey League handicap races last month. The work load seemed to be distributed 60-40% in my favour. With 3 laps to go we had a minute on the bunch. Encouraging perhaps but I was well aware things were far from secure so kept the pace up when on the front.

Josh tended to ride on the hoods when in front which definitely blunted our overall speed. Having discovered that he was still only a fourth cat Junior last month I can only say he did fantastically well. With 2 laps to go our gap had dropped to 40secs and at beginning of the last lap I asked again and was told the gap was down to ten secs. Damn! and there was me planning my race winning report. Lol!! So we stayed away for more than 90 minutes before finally been swallowed up. I naturally sat in on the last lap and tried a Geraint Thomas style pursuit effort with 2k's to go. I got caught with around 800 mterte to go on the 1k climb up to the finish. Oh well it was fun while it lasted. I'm getting better just need a good result to confirm it.