Revenge of the 4th Cats! (almost)

Well, I am recovering from a rather interesting evening's racing as I type. The setting, Round 8 of the CDNW Road Race League. The race, a 30mile handicap for all categories. Everyone expected the usual shortlived display of courage from the lower category riders followed by the inevitable annhialation of most riders not lucky enough to be and Elite or 1st/2nd Cat. It did not however turn out exactly as expected.


I should just point out that in a handicap race, the lower categories get a headstart on the 'stronger' riders. In this case, my group of 4th Cats (and a woman, hats off to her) was off first, followed 2 mins later by the 3rds, and 6 mins later by the Elites 1sts and 2nds. 


So I must say I was quite apprehensive about this bit, after having looked on the start sheet to find there were only 11 of us due to start in this first group compared to 20+ in the other two groups. But we pressed on regardless and it quite quickly became clear there were only a handful of us willing/able to work to drive the group along; and it quite quickly fractured leaving a leading group of 7. To cut a long story short, we kept the other groups pegged at about 1 min 20 and 2 mins 40 respectively. We achieved this through teamwork. Sounds simple, but we quite quickly realised that if we wanted to have any chance of staying away and any of us winning we'd have to keep this group together. And so it progressed until with about 3 laps to go they started eating into our lead; and by the last lap we only had about 40 secs to the big 'Scratch' group of everyone else (as the Elite group had caught the 3rds earlier on). No need to panic though as we kept assuring ourselves, they can't go that much quicker...can they? Well yes, they could, and did. And so it fell to the last corner to play the pivotal role in my race. 

The last corner was about 500m from the finish (500m uphill by the way), and just as we got to it someone shouted 'they're right behind us'. Now, one of our group had gone clear a few mins earlier, and I thought he was still clear ahead-so I decided to 'have a go' as they say and sprinted off round this corner and up towards the finish. I quite quickly realised that he had in fact been swallowed by our mini group just before the corner and that I was actually in with a chance of winning! If my sprint could hold of course....perhaps fortunately (or unfortunately depending on which way you look at it) I never found out, because about 200m from the line there was a 'whoosh' as most of the Scratch group sprinted past me. Bugger. I could NOT believe it...7 4th Cats had worked DAMN hard all the way through only to have collective victory snatched from them on the line.


But that, as they say, is bike racing. C'est la vie...:)