Today was the day of the South East Road Racing League's own championships and the last in their Summer Series on a tough, undulating 85 mile course, just south of Tunbridge Wells, the weather and the field would only make it tougher, as though the number of athletes competing was only around 50-60, it had a lot of talent in it. There were to be 6 laps with a hill-top finish and here goes my re-telling of the event. We decided at the beginning that both e and Malcolm Davies were to be the team's protected riders out of the 5 of us with me looking into any good breaks that developed. The first two laps,  got into a couple of little moves and one quite big one with 6 of us away however nothing stuck, but towards the end of the second lap both Allan Ridler, the eventual winner, of Pedal Heaven and William Pratt of Dulwich Paragon then struck it out alone, within a couple of miles they had managed to pull out a lead of a minute. Halfway round the third lap Paul Pickup from Pedal Heaven attacked pulling out a 30 second plus advantage, I then decided this was the time to go as by this point the two leaders had made their advantage over the peloton go up to around the 1 minute 30 mark. So I bridged across to the Paul Pickup and then for the next lap two-up time-trialled it closing the gap to a minute to the two leaders, but nothing more and us holding an advantage back to the peloton of around 45 secs to a minute. A third of the way round, Chris McNamara, also of Pedal Heaven and Andy Betts of Felt-Colbrones bridged across to me and Paul where we worked well together as a unit, but never seriously denting Allan and William's lead. However, at the bell for the last lap we picked up William Pratt, his legs having blown and Allan Ridler then decided to fly the coop and solo. Due to this, Chris and Paul decided to sit up as they did not want to help chase down a team mate leaving me and Andy Betts to do all the work. However this backed fired as with about 5 miles remaining we were caught by the peloton who had over the previous 7 miles close a gap of a minute to us. Allan was still up the road and managed to hold on for a great solo win, but the rest of the bunch was now approaching the bottom of the 1500m long ascent to the finish, at which, just after we started the climb, Malcolm Davies decided to attack, managing to hold on and grab second place. Wishing not to aid the capture of Malcolm and being a bit knackered from being in 99% of the day's moves I attacked with about 1km to go, at which point the peloton decided to try and chase me down, but I managed to hold them off for third. A cracking day from the riders at Aprire with the team tactics working to perfection, just a shame one of us couldn't win, but there's always next year. Great domestique duties from Phil Dempsey, Josh Parkin and Fabio Amati, special thanks probably has to go to the latter for sheltering me once I was caught by the peloton with 5 miles to go.

I am now officially knackered, but what a way for us at Aprire to finish this so called Summer off hey.

Now I'm off to play fifa and drink Tuborg like a proper geezer with some of the boys, I will let you know how my next race goes on Thursday. Cheers