Only a week since the last race, suddenly the championship is coming to a head and lots of riders want a pice of the action. Here's how it went for me last night...............
The start was an uphill fire road climb as per the last race here a few weeks since, I went backwards when I missed the change onto the big ring, but was something like 7th into the first singletrack, following; Matt Barret, Paul Robertson, Adrian Scott, Jason Hucklesby, Chris Rathbone, Lloyd Bettles. As soon as we left the woods again I set about moving forward despatching Rathbone, Bettles and soon-to-retire Hucklesby in quick succession. In fact Hucks' face was a picture; when holding 4th he looked over his shoulder and the colour drained from his face when he saw it was me coming to spoil his day, priceless!
This left Barret, Robertson and Scott up front with me chasing (ultimately in vain but I kept them honest). I'd practiced the bottom woods four times over before the start even finding the best front suspension setting to keep the steering tight so was able to really enjoy myself through there, but soon I started getting slight gear-shifting and indexing problems, I moved the gear adjuster to compensate but went the wrong way making the problem worse.
On lap two I saw Barret at the side of the track before the very fast descent, he'd ripped his tubeless rear tyre away from the rim, race over for him leaving me on the podium if I kept my head down. By lap three I could see Robertson and Scott working together to move inexorably away, my shifting problems temporarily halted my chase allowing Bettles to get his tail up and start in on the gap between us. I saw him coming at the top woods; I'd thought he was safely behind so trying not to panic I REALLY put the hammer down. A combination of my renewed pace, gears working properly and Bettles crashing while trying to pass two Rugby Velo back-markers put a stop to his ambitions but he still wasn't far away (he later claimed he was going to catch me no matter what I did!). As it was, Bettles had hurt his right arm and hand and was detuned enough not to threaten me further.
This didn't mean I eased off, I wasn't aware of the drama unfolding behind me so I looked out for Bettles next lap, he was much further back so I concentrated once again on trying to catch the leaders. I did make faster laps than the leaders once or twice, but not enough to make an impression. They were having a right old ding-dong or so it appeared, Robertson shadowing Scott for much of the later stages before putting in a decisive spurt, securing the win with Scott in second. With no one else challenging me, I was chuffed with third, just catching and lapping team-mate Troy Rollason before the finish line - he didn't thank me for that. Bettles was fourth and Rathbone came home in fifth.
I was happy to beat all my closest competitiors in the points standings, but now Adrian Scott has qualified he's shot straight to the top of the table. Other riders in contention are Nick Jones and Paul Robertson; if either or both of these two turn up and have a good race next week it could spoil a lots of peoples championship aspirations, not least mine. Mind you, if you'd have offered me my points tally today at the strart of the season I'd have snapped your hand off, so I can't be disappointed, can I?
There are a lot of riders on four races who need next weeks' event to qualify overall, it's gonna be busy.
