Tuesday, 24 July 2007

Crystal Palace report

Crystal Palace once again, this time I was going to win, pulled my white Rocket 7's out of their hiding place in my wardrobe this morning, nice sunny day so already had the day mapped out in my mind. During the day I needed to get my race bike cleaned up and change my tires on my zipp 404's, as well as doing all my normal work as well, all went well except for the eating food part as it got busy in the afternoon, managed to get a sandwich at 5.30pm, a little late as I was well hungry. at least I got my bike all cleaned up, find I have to clean my bike about 3 times as it is easy to smear the dirt about on my white HSG carbon Serotta. Used a new polish, brings up a very nice shine. Also polish my Zipp rims, changed the Michelin Pro grip tires I put on for the Smithfield Nocturne, very grippy tires but do cut up quickly, felt new Pro2 tires in black should be fine for the rest of the season, if it rains in a race I will adjust the tire pressure before the start.90psi in the wet, in the dry about 105psi unless it is a circuit like Hillindon and I may go to 120psi.
Anyway it took an hour to get my bike ready, so after switching my frame fit pump and filled up my drink bottle with Born energy drink I was out of the shop at 6:20pm riding to Cyrstal palace with all the commuters, oh there is some bad riders out they.
Picked up a few other riders on the way, just gentle spinning along, nice and hot for once.Plenty of riders had signed up tonight, Our race got under with 35 laps to do and me at the very back, by the end of the first lap I had moved up to 5th to see that Ben Pochee had already fled the field so I went after him, caught him in a lap and we settled into building up a lead with me trying not to do to much, after a few laps we could see that 5 riders had got away from the bunch and were trying to catch us, Ben asked if we should wait up for them, I said let them catch us as the main field was not that far behind them, it took them maybe two laps longer than they expected to bridge as it looked as if they had caught us but no one had actually made the junction so we hovered at about 5 bike lengths for a while until Sam made contact, we all worked together with me doing some strong pulls on the climb.
about half way through the race I buried it on the climb to see if we could get a smaller selection, was expecting maybe 1 or 2 riders to get dropped but managed to drop 4, so had with me Sam from London Dynamo and Matt Seaton rider for Rapha Condor, I did some hard pulls to make the break count then slowly allowed Sam and Matt set the pace, still I did the top of the climb and the headwind along the finish straight, we gradually increased our lead, and even lapped the main bunch. I was trying to set it up for Sam to win but in the end Matt had the better of Sam so I made sure Matt wasn't getting First, wasn't a sprint just a very quick windup for the line, didn't help that we caught the main bunch again while going for the line, no victory salute, just don't feel compelled to, need more emotion and bigger event to get me going.
So only my 2nd win this year, both at Crystal Palace, feel good, no more antibiotics since last friday has helped as well.
On Sunday I am racing in the E,1,2 Invitation race at the Sutton Town centre races at 15.45, there is a day of racing starting at 10am for riders under 10, then progressing up to the Elite National Reynolds/Michelin Woman's road race series at 13.45, shall be a good day out, heard that it is a short circuit with some cobbles, looking forward to it.

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