The race started at a fairly comfortable pace and continued this way for just over a lap, at which point all hell broke loose on one of the steeper climbs of the circuit and and attacks started flying from all directions. Fortunately the tactical mastermind known as the 'Cycling Teacher' (http://willkempcycling.blogspot.com/) had predicted pre-race that this would happen on this exact climb on this lap and this meant that our team was ready. Team mate Matt 'Northern Star' Pilkington was already up the road as the attacks started to fly and despite our teams best efforts to block, we filled the front of the bunch with 5 orange jerseys spread across the road, there were lots of riders getting a gap up the climb and across to him. At this point I decided to follow the attacks and went pretty hard up the climb. When I got over the top I looked behind and saw team mate Drew Holmes right on my wheel and then behind him a massive gap. This was the decisive split which the 'Cycling Teacher' had predicted with the original main bunch splitting into two groups of 20. We had 3 riders in the front group of 20; myself, Drew and Matt. Towards the end of the second lap our group started to fracture with small groups of twos and threes going away. At this point I was still feeling strong but as I had never been in this position of being in the break in a big man's race before, largely due to my bulky body weight last season and lack of superior leg muscles, I decided to hold back as we were only on the second lap of six. 8 riders ended up going away and we could tell straight away that we were not going to be seeing these guys again today as their group consisted of all the stronglads.
The second group with; me, Drew, Matt and 5 others riders continued to do through and off for a couple of more laps. Although, I don't think many of the 'older generation' of riders in our group, guys that were even older than Matt and Will (I know I didn't think it possible either), actually understood what this was as they continued to bark at us to go through and off even though that was what we had been doing for the last 30 miles! They also seemed incapable of understanding, despite being told many times, that me and the other junior in the group Lawrence Carpenter couldn't come through on descents because of our little junior gears.
Drew had been suffering for a number of laps and with 2 laps to go he got dropped from our group on the finish climb. A couple of other guys had been dropped the lap before and our group was now down to 9 riders. At this point I was feeling really strong but then suddenly with about one and a half laps to go I blew up big time. This ultimately ended up in me getting dropped up one of the larger climbs towards the end of the circuit and finishing the end of that lap very very slowly before hanging up my wheels for the day. I was really angry with myself, and also surprised, as I had gone from feeling like one of the stronger riders in the group to being completely spent within the space of half a lap. I hoping that this is because this is my first long race of the season and that my body isn't ready to make such a big effort for such a long period of time yet.
Matt ended up being the first rider from our group which ended up being 9th overall so at least the team came away with a result and it made up some consolation for me as I had done quite a lot of work in our group enabling Matt to sit on the back and rest his legs at some points.
The most important thing I learnt from today's race is that... My new Reynolds are sweeeeeeet. They felt fast and super smooth and the race photographer obviously noticed this to as he took a photo of me which showed my new wheels looking first class.
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