Approx 1,200m altitude meters, beautiful morning but at 10:00 a.m. temperature feeling quite hot, already. This was National B roadrace with points for the top20 rather than the usual top10 or 15. It attracted a flock of riders totally different from the usual Surrey League peloton.
This was my first Elite race since 1992! (I think) and I had not even ridden this distance in training since the Ride-London-Prudential-100 almost a year ago.
A fully booked peloton of 80 riders, half of those Elites and Cat1 the other half mainly cat2 with a very few selected cat3. Amongst the likes of Pedalheaven and Genesis, Richardson-Trek etc, we were represented by Jamie Francis (cat2), James Local (cat 2 and arguably our strongest rider at the moment) and myself (cat2).
My plan was simply to survive the race in the bunch and see it as preparation for the German Roadrace Classic in 5 weeks time. The race was not really dominated by any of the Elite teams, the average speed was high, although quite inconsistent throughout. Extremely fast surges, with a few interspersed slow sections where nobody wanted to do any chasing work. Lots of attacking, but even larger breaks got caught back by the super charged up bunch. On flat sections we were usually hitting the 55km/h mark. Somehow the whole course felt like going mostly downhill, but obviously I only imagined this due to the high speeds when in fact there were same uphill meters as downhill. Three riders got away on the last few miles, I think leaving the rest of us for a bunch sprint, but nobody seemed to know. Due to some misinformation I understood we would be going onto a 7 laps minicircuit before the finish, but with 300m to go and me somewhere in the last third of the remaining bunch I realised I must have gotten something wrong and picked up sprinting with everyone around me waggling their tails, already. Managed to make about 10-15 places good in the sprint and got in on 17th , earning my first national BCF points ever and my first 5 points this season. Personally it was a good step in the development of my form. Still not feeling punchy and not getting enough oxygene, but managing now to work with my problems and not against them anymore.
http://www.velouk.net/2014/06/01/report-result-neil-gardner-memorial-rr/