Another Sunday and another Serrl

This weekend marked another Sunday and another Serrl road race, this one a little less intimidating than last weekend as it was only 60 miles and was only a 2/3/4 event. The Cycling Teacher was meant to be team leader for the race but unfortunately he fell ill and had to withdraw himself from the race the night before. Team manager and team sponsor at the race, Trevor Holmes, therefore decided that me and Drew would be the team leaders for the day.

The race was pretty steady for the first two laps with the only worry being the endless amount of attacks from Dulwich Paragon riders, who seemed to have 50% of the field in their jersey. I tried to get into a few moves but nothing was allowed to get away and as the circuit wasn't super hilly it was quite hard to make a break happen. After about 3 laps team mate Tom Laker made his routine crash when the guy in front of him came down claiming that his ' brand new and unused slippery tubs' just sipped on the corner, it didn't sound very convincing to me.

With one lap to go the race was still all together and in the first quarter of the last lap a group of 3 riders rode away from the peloton. The riders in the break weren't very strong and they were pretty much just let to go off the front as everyone presumed they'd come back fairly quickly. Unfortunately this did not happen and once we came to the main climb on the circuit, the top of which was only 1.5 miles from the finish, they still had a gap. At this stage my legs were feeling fine and this other guy who had seemed strong during the race attacked. I considered following but then decided against it as I had already got it in my head that I would wait for the sprint, still presuming the other riders would come back. Once we were over the top of the climb I found myself around 6th wheel and was 4th wheel with about a mile to go. At this point everybody sat up and I found myself right at the front riding into the wind with nowhere to go. I stupidly remained here and then when the sprint started, not very surprisingly, I had no zip left in my legs. I was pretty angry afterward, especially after finding out that the guy who had attacked over the top of the climb had caught and passed the leaders. This picture pretty much sums up how I felt after the finish:

Once I found out that Drew had won the bunch sprint for 4th place, as one of the escapees from the original three riders was brought back in the last kilometre. I felt a bit better but was still really annoyed with myself for not going with the move on the hill. According to Mr Felix English it's probably that I 'should just be less of a pussy' and shouldn't be scared about making a gamble or hurting myself early on in the race. For once I actually agree with him and I think I was 'such a pussy' in the race because after last season, where I was pretty much obese, my main objective would always be to stay with the bunch as long as I could and avoid wasting unnecessary energy where possible. Whereas this year I've actually done some training so can allow myself to use more energy early on getting into to breaks and making gambles in attacks etc.

Drew won the bunch sprint for 4th

Next weekend is the big one, first round of the Junior Nat Series. The Cadence Road Race, which I am looking at on google street view at the current time of writing and it appears that it is the same circuit this year as the one I did on the first road stage of the Ras De Cymru last June/July. As I remember the lap is not too bad but had one quite hard climb in it every time round, which the race subsequently finishes up, so that should be interesting. That is providing I'm healthy. I woke up this morning with a saw throat which I was not too happy about and I'm now filling my body with vitamin c to make sure it doesn't get any worse before the highly prestigious first classic of the season in Ital... Wales. Cadence that is, not Milan-San Remo.