Despite weekly weekday racing there since the 2012 Olympics I personally never managed to race there. as it is on the other side of the city and timewise not manageable with my workweek. So this was the one and only opportunity for me to race this course. The race was practically all Amateur Club racers Category Elite,1,2,3. Luckily at current, we don't have any Elites in our club but a whole lot of young and fresh newcomers who couldn't wait to test against experienced riders (and old farts like me). As ever, the higher the category the riders had to accept higher handicaps, with a handful of 1st cats starting a good 2 mins behind the huge field of 3rd cats. I think the ratio was about 35 3rd cats versus 10 2ns cats versus 2 1st cats.
The 3rds worked pretty well together to hold the 1st and 2nd cats off until the last 10 laps.
I knew they would catch us pretty damaged and with my long known sprint abilities managed to clinch 2nd place, much to the upset of many 2nd cat riders. I leave this as another legacy to the club. Our all time sprint star Gavin Ryan, who is 15 years younger than me took the expected win and our new rising star Tobias Dahlhaus, who I think is 30 years younger than me, took 3rd.
After a cocked up season 2017 this at least brought some smiles into my otherwise grim face...
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| Keeping the pace high, until it was clear that the 2nd and 3rd wouldn't catch us, which would have been unfair. |
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| I had the feeling that some of the other old farts really had an eye on me... |
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| It was the first full out sprint for me in 2017 and took me a week to recover from it. |