Following the effort of the previous day I was considering to pull out and only last minute decided to drive up to Wing. Still clearly feeling the effort of the previous day I was just hoping to finish this race in the bunch, not getting dropped or giving up. It began totally manic, after two laps I thought there is no way I will stay that through. We must have had an average speed of well above 45km/h when first small groups of riders broke away. I couldnt believe it, how...while I was just about managing to cling to the rear wheel in front of me, riders managed to peel off at the front, clearly some riders couldn't follow the wheel they were following. Suddenly a guy ahead of me hits a hole and swerves straight into the field and ditch on the roadside, not without tumbling over his bars twice, frightening sight, but he had a soft landing despite the 50km/h we were doing at the time. Every lap we went through a little village with traffic islands and parked cars at full throttle, although the road was flat we never had less then 55km/h, totally mental. Of course, the hill, quite a legbreaker, not unlike Bletchingley, which I really started feeling from lap 4 out of 7 (because of neutral section we had to get up the hill 8 times). All breakaways except the one that went from lap one got caught back on the final 500m, pretty messy situation, riders being totally fatigued hardly getting up the hill anymore and a slightly fresher field charging up the hill. My final ascent was the same scenario as Bletchingley in May, legs broken, actually had to get off the bike and on the grass after. I got in 22nd of only approx 42 riders who finished the race (of 67 starters). This was the hardest race for me so far this year and with 240km of racing over one weekend will probably take me a week to recover from it.
