Bike race success at last

Saturday was the first bike race of the road season in our area. It wasn't a real race for points, but an arranged race for several clubs to get their racing legs, bikes and pseudo-pro gear out in the fresh air for the first time of 2010. There were 6 separate starts for the younger guys - U11,U13, U15, U17, the fast guys (A,B,C, over 40s, and Juniors) and the not so fast guys (women, D, over 50s and over 60s). As this is my first season racing and I am overweight undertrained I have to be in the D class which used to be called Beginners to give some context and I started with the other numpties, one woman and the old men. We rode 7 laps of an 8 km (approx 5 mile) course with a pretty strong wind blowing in our faces for around 2/3 of the lap.

My last experiences of road racing had ended with me getting dropped by the group about half way through the race, but as I think I am in slightly better shape, it was only a semi serious race and I now have a better bike (racing wheels aside...) I was able to stay with the group to the end and was in fact about to win when 2 guys sneaked past me in the last 5 metres thus relegating me to 3rd.

I was really happy with the result, but I am not 100% certain that the 5 of us in the group at the end were the only ones left of the group at the end of the race and that there weren't others who had gone up the road ahead of us. I can't find the results on line at the moment, maybe I'll never know, but I was happy to get through it and our average speed of >35kmh was high enough to allow me to believe that I will be able to hang with the group when the real racing starts in a few weeks for me at least). Next up for me is the first Dust Cup mountainbike race on 21st April.

Yesterday I was mostly cleaning, washing and waxing the car - boring.