First Loser

What a nice hot day yesterday was, started by washing the car, 2nd time this has been done this year, noticed the neighbour from upstairs has been happily opening his door repeatedly into the side of my white car as there is about 20 black marks from his black Landrover, hope he has chipped the paint and his door rusts.
Aside from that I managed to convince my wife to come to South Wales by saying it is only a 3 hour drive along the M4 motorway, always forget how long it takes to get out of London itself from East Dulwich, so an hour in and just getting onto the M4.
My wife is then going on about how hot it is, 29 degrees showing on the digital display on the dashboard and why has this car not got air conditioning, does have a Bose stereo with 8 speakers and a RCA input jack to plug the monster cable to my Ipod Nano, so all not bad.
Nothing like driving with the fan on 3 with all the vents open, just means your t-shirt sticks to your back, but thats life, you move on, so if I get a car with air conditioning and maybe automatic so my wife can drive I will be sorted.
Made it to South Wales OK, traffic was very heavy but kept flowing so good, had a mild moment on the Severn Bridge trying to find enough cash to pay the Toll for the bridge on the entry to Wales, shouldn't have bought that Magnum ice cream and 2 cokes at the services with the tenner in my wallet before hand, as it was Sawako(wife) had enough coins to get the required £5.10 we needed.
Arrived at 5pm, so had plenty of time before race so went and walked round the circuit, 1km seems along way when walking, first impession was that it was very narrow, rough road surface on certain corners and twisty, actually to many parts to circuit so didn't fully understand the layout untill later while riding it. Went back to sign on and get ready, race start was for 8pm, had a few drops of rain at 6pm, had everyone looking at the sky.
I left my valve extender at home for my zipp 404's so asked a few people with deep section wheels if I could borrow there's, amazing how many wheels have them permanently fixed in place, so riders never let tyres down etc!. Anyway managed to borrow one from Dexter Gardias father, while he borrowed my 2mm allan key to adjust his sons brakes.
Felt nervous for the first time in a while, I think my body knows what is going to happen before my brain does, so to take my mind off this I went for a long warm up ride out into the country, were again I start wondering what would happen if I get a puncture out here, should remember to take mobile phone with me. 40 minutes of riding I am back at the car for the final time, take leg warmers off, splash on some Born Muscle Up lotion, has a nice orange glow to it, makes your legs look more tanned than they are and has a nice shine to it(better than Baby oil anyway) and proceeded to do some laps of the circuit before our race, once riding round felt better as the circuit had a real nice flow to it and a good racing line could be had.
Before our race could start one of the sponsors of the race had a race car blast round the circuit for two laps, popping and banging as it went round, very highly tuned car, racing slicks and all.
I had sat on the start line for 10 minutes in the attempt to keep a close postion to the front, which payed off, also was called forward anyway as one of the top ten in the series.
The race got underway and was frantic, on the first corner I went from tenth to fifth by holding a tight inside line, someone crashed into the barriers on the outside of the corner, the Merlin squad where on the front gunning the pace, everyone scrabbling for wheels, being so narrow the barriers were ever present and with one section being blind entry you where flicking the bike right then left, after the first lap I did not want to be stuck anywere in the bunch so when the pace slowed midway up the short climb leading into the paved allyway past the pubs I attacked to carry the speed through this section knowing no one else would be able to get past the slowing riders, so when I noticed I had someone on my wheel I was suprised as the gap I had got by was tight, as it was that was the move and the only one we needed as we were on our way to build up a lead that no one could match(read race report).
Thinking about the finish I have to have more faith in myself that I have got just as good a sprint as anyone else so why did I kick with 300m to go, as I gapped Simon but then he caught and kicked from my wheel which meant I was shown up again. Need to get more crafty, slow it up etc, still there are more races this year.Nice to be on the podium again spraying Champagne at the camera man, crowd to far away.
Packed up and then drove home, stopping at some motorway service area at 10:30pm, I was not hungry as my body felt close to being sick after the race, although once back in the car I was, so ate the last of Sawako's Panini. Got home at 12:45am, not bad, very tired but really hungry so heated the oven and cooked a Pizza Express pizza, body is sore as did no warm down our any stretches after so better go for an easy spin today as I am racing Tomorrow in a Surrey League race promoted by London Dynamo. My first road race since May.