‘Eel meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when…

I missed Palace this week due to an emergency call to come home (ill children, luckily nothing too serious) so decided to go to Eelmore on Wednesday night instead. Hmmm, more sprinting out of corners. I did at least manage to get the HR up with a 3 lap breakaway with one other Reading rider, but it was doomed from the start – far too early in the race and no one came across to join us. As usual it seemed to be a slightly negative race, albeit fairly safe and well behaved. I found myself near the back with 3 to go, worked my way up, lost my position too easily and didn’t bother with the sprint, coming in near the back of the bunch.

Annoying for two reasons. 1) I should be able to hold my position in the final few laps far better by now, it certainly isn’t a lack of fitness that is the problem. 2) I hate having to scrub off all the speed going into a corner. And I mean all the speed, right down to crawling pace. I’m so wary of the cornering ability of some other riders and of the dodgy lines they take. One bloke was taking a fairly tight line into corners and then, on the way out when he had slowed a bit, taking a great looping sway across the whole track then swaying back in again. Ridiculous, he’d done the hard bit on the way in!

I think something changes in your attitude to risk as you get older, and it certainly doesn’t help bike racing! I have the SERRL road race this weekend (my first RR in over a year) and I can’t say that I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully the lumpy course will split the bunch early on and make for a slightly safer race than the last one I did, where riders were taking insane risks going round blind bends on the wrong side of the road…