Boom, Boom, Boom

I was looking forward to continuing my fine run of form this week with the 3 races coming up a 90km crit around Auray town centre of Thursday evening, a 90km crit right on the coast on the Friday evening near Sarzeau and a 90km semi-nocturne on Sunday at Plouay.

Unfortunately at Auray I DNFed after about 40% had been completed, it was a small field of around 60, as were the other two races this week, but it was a quality field here at Auray being a 1/2/3 event. The course had lots of slow corners with massive, out-of-the-saddle accelerations out of them and my knee really began to hurt and struggle and knowing that I had another 2 races still left to race and where I would also be much more competitive I decided to cut my losses and quit. Annoyingly if I had of continued rolling round the course I would have probably got another top 20 as only 22 finished and a few these were dropped well before I decided to pack it in.

So on to Friday's race at Sarzeau, no slow corners with big accelerations, but 45 laps including a 400m long hill, sadly for me I missed the move that eventually decided the win even though they were never more than 45 seconds from me. All the other moves before and after the winning break I got in, but I was very closely marked all race which was incredibly frustrating and so I only got 8th when really I was capable of a top 5. What didn't help was that both George and Hamish had stopped early during the race and were not there to have a positive impact upon proceedings, but by the time I had finished the race they were well lubricated after spending the remainder of the race in the pub.

After the race me and Loic (a team-mate who had also driven us there) joined them and it did not take me long to get fairly merry. Loic then decided it would be a brilliant idea to show us prized monkeys off at the local he frequents before and after F.C. Lorient football matches, a bar famous locally for having 600 different kinds of drink available including a shot called 'the Alice in Wonderland'. A lot of banter, drinks, nachos and French dried sausage (not a euphemism) later we eventually went home though George did have the pleasure of sharing a bed with Loic as it was too much effort to take George home for any of us.

Saturday was definitely a rest then on Sunday was a race on some of the 2000 World Championship Circuit and it was certainly challenging with a mile long steady hill followed by a short descent and a very steep hill lasting 400 metres just after. Then it was a fast, rolling decent to the finish straight that crested up slightly and then went a bit downhill, the straight was about 1km long. So 15 laps were in order of the course and just like all my previous races, lots of moves went and came back to the bunch in pretty short time when after a few laps George managed to get away with a few others and they preceded to eke out a pretty good gap. Hamish and Sam Allen attacked soon after and managed to jump across to them where this lead group then managed to pull out a 30 second lead pretty rapidly. I then snuck to get into the second break who then bridged across to this lead group where we had about a minute over the peloton. This was with 9 laps to go still and from then on a couple of people would get dropped every time we went up and over the two ascents. Then with a little under 2 laps to go, two guys attacked and got away from our group that numbered 15 at this point. Soon after George and two other guys attacked and managed to get across to the 2 out in front with just under a lap to go. I sat in the remainder of what had been the lead group doing sod all and then over the top of 2 ascents, for the last time, we in the chasing group were gaining on the front 5 who were beginning to look around at each other. We almost caught the front 5 on the line as I won the sprint from second group grabbing 6th finishing right on 5th position's wheel, George meanwhile scored an excellent 2nd.

Sadly in none of these races was I able to add to winnings I got from the previous Sunday's race, but although my right knee hurt considerably on Thursday and towards the latter stages on Friday's and Sunday's races I was still extremely pleased with how it felt and managed the workload. Apart from the minor blip at Auray, my good run has continued and hopefully with this new found consistency I will soon be delivering even better results.

As we are approximately halfway through the cycling season I think it is appropriate to give everyone some basic facts about my race season so far and it is quite interesting to see what I have achieved in just raw, basic statistics. The numbers include the amount that also qualifies for the above category, so, for example, 5 top 10s and 7 top 15s, the latter also is inclusive of the 5 top 10s achieved. Here we go:

Out of the 30 races started by me this year I have failed to finish 6 of them.

I have achieved 2 wins and 5 podiums, but these were all in Britain before I came out.

1 top 5 here in France.

5 top 10s here in France and 6 top 10s in Britain, the latter is now a fixed number for the subsequent statistics as out of the 6 races competed in by me in Britain, I achieved 6 top 10s.

6 top 15s in France.

9 top 20s in France

11 top 30s in France.

I hope everyone is well and the racing is going strongly too, until next time...