Langdale Lightweights Racing Team: Sun, Sweat and Slopes

East Midlands Regional Road Race Championships

On what was the hottest day of the year so far, and at this rate the hottest day of 2010 ;) haha We set off in the team van on our way to the Div Champs, that just happened to be right on the possible edge of our region, up near Grimsby!!!!!

However still classed as Lincolnshire, I expected a flat or at the very most a slightly rolling course. Well how wrong could i be.................................. VERY!

With a course that consisted of either up or down and no flat sections, it was a little bit of a shock as we drove round before the race, on top of this a savage finishing climb, and a very good field of riders, it was gonna be a tough day out.

My basic race plan was to try and sneak off in a move reasonably early, and try and catch out some of the favourites, and just see what happened from there. I had a few goes to get up the road early but to no avail. I sat up and waited until a little bit later.

At this point Dave Clake and Rob Sharman managed to attack and get a little group up the road. With the two biggest names up the road, i was kicking myself for missing that!!

During the middle point of the race it was a case of trying and following moves to try and get a good chase group organised. But with lots of stong riders in the bunch, it was quite difficult to get out. But not from lack of trying!!!!

After missing a chase group, finally, get away I knew that it would be race over if i could get across to them.

Eventually I managed to get out of the bunch, and had a small group with me, Being the strongest in the group, I rode them off my wheel up the finishing climb and set off in pursuit of the chasers with one other rider. With less than 5km to go and the chase group at less than 15secs, I was joined by few more riders, which stopped our chase as noboody was commited with so little of the race left.

So up the climb to the finish, I still felt strong and went hard up the steep ramp, and manged to get rid of most of the group, cresting the top it was straight into the big ring for the sprint. And i just got rolled on the line, But was really happy to find out that I had finised 9th.

A great race, on a hard course,

Big thanks to Mick for taking us up again and feeding us with a lot of bottles :) :)

And a fantastic ride by Paul, in his longest race ever, for being spot on with positioning for the feed, and awesome team work!! :)