Gimme a Break!

Patrick (shavedlegs.co.uk) is upfront speed dating. He's been there for three or four laps now trying to breakaway. Looking for partners to take away with you is clearly fraught with difficulties. Quite rightly, potential suitors have their own agendas or physical limitations so these 'race' relationships tend to be brief, tentative and lack sustainability. Oh and of course all this gets nullified by the bunch factor. If they're up and ready for action you might be a match made in heaven; it don't matter all partnerships are doomed

I had too much bloody time on my hands; and when that happens I'm usually late. I got to the race just in time, and no warm up meant I spent the first twenty minutes of the race mid pack. The pace was very comfortable so perhaps I wondered this would be a good day to try something :-)

So 40 blokes on bikes; a couple of girls, one from BikeHut nice weather and sixty minutes on London's most popular criterium circuit. On duty for ACC was myself, Matt and Kieran. Kieran sat in priming himself for Palace torture next week no doubt ;-) and Matt showed good strength with quite a few digs off the front in the second half of the race


Somewhere near the half hour mark myself and a big fella slipped away from the pack and soon began taking turns in our a bid to escape. I don't think we ever had more than 15 secs but it was great to get away. It got slightly farcical at one point though as my breakaway buddy did a bit of cyclocross by riding off on to the grass on one of the bends. We both had a little chuckle about it and soon enough we were caught a couple of laps later

Now ain't racing a bitch! Successful breakaways often form when an earlier one has just been caught. So there I was trying to get my lungs to re inflate and my tongue off the floor and 4 or 5 guys got away - followed by a few others jumping across. Now, not too much of a problem as long as the bunch continues along at a good pace. Right? Er yeah as long as some sneaker fuckers aren't blocking at the head of the bunch.(A MESSAGE TO IN EXPERIENCED RACERS RIDING NEAR THE FRONT. WHEN THE PACE SLOWS DOWN TO PUSHING SHOPPING TROLLEYS AROUND SAINSBURY'S SPEED IT USUALLY MEANS A PERSON OR PERSONS ARE DEFINITELY 'BLOCKING' TO ALLOW THEIR TEAM MATES IN THE BREAK TO GETAWAY SO PLEASE GET ON THE FRONT AND KEEP THINGS MOVING) Not quite a perfect split. But nevertheless two groups now divided by 30 secs.

So fully recovered but in the wrong group. What da fuck do you do? 72kgs, 300watts FT allows you to sit in really comfortably in 3rd cat race such that you can attack and recover in the bunch. Sadly, however, in my own case it doesn't allow you to close a 40sec gap solo into a headwind. How about an organised chase perhaps? Mmmm...that would be nice. But then again so would a lottery win. Tried both, no luck.

When the 5 laps to go sign went up I decided just to do some extra training and towed our group around as hard as I could for a couple laps Then I sat in and rolled to the back while people sprinted it out on the last lap . Grrrr!