Sprinter

Firstly sorry for not posting anything last week, I ended up spending most of the weekend in bed feeling rather sorry for myself after a week of bad stomach pains. As a result my first 2/3/4 race of the season was this weekend instead of last weekend.

The plan was to race the Merseyside Wheelers Road Race last weekend and the Frank Morgan Memorial Road Race this weekend. I'd like to thank both organisers for letting me onto the start sheet at the 11th hour. I was reluctant to pre-enter either race given my fragile state but at least I only missed one race. Both events were run like large crits using industrial estates. Given the low volume of traffic on industrial estates on a Sunday it's a stroke of genius to run road races on them. The circuits were not as technical as most crits given the comparative large size of the circuit (about 2 miles round) and the race distance can be closer to that of an actual road race without the riders getting bored of the course. The only down side I can see is that with HGV's and trade vehicles using the road constantly during the week the tarmac can get a little chewed up in places. Great plan then for the organiser of the Frank Morgan Memorial to do a neutralised sighting laps while pointing out hazards from the lead car. Nicely organised event in all and the free food at race HQ really was the icing on the cake.

The race was run over 24 laps of a 2 mile box circuit featuring 2 lane wide, one-way roads on all sides with a points paying sprint prime on every lap, the idea being the rider with the highest points at the end of the race wins the "Green Jersey". True to my usual form I was at the front from the start  picking up full points for the sprints competition with little effort on the first and third laps after that I lost count of the laps where I picked up full points but almost every time I entered into the sprint I won it. Suffice to say I was feeling fit. Up until that point in the race I was happy to chase break away attempts in the interest of keeping up in the sprint rankings. But It's not a rewarding game to play. With about 60km left to race I made a solo attack (not tactically astute at all). The break lasted long enough to score me another sprint win and inspired a small group to bridge up to me, we got ourselves organised, eventually, and managed to stay away for 15km without too much trouble. Of course it all fell apart when people started missing turns and shying away from the work on the windy sides of the circuit and yet again I was all too willing to take up the slack.

After we got dragged back to the bunch I was all but sure the race would come down to a bunch sprint, we had 30km left to race and thus far no attacks had gained anything over 20 seconds on the bunch. Solo attacks and pairs struggled in the headwind and anything bigger than 5 riders was seen as too dangerous and got shut down by one of the 4 well represented teams (Max Gear, Stan's Bikes, Liverpool Mercury or Bike Box) all of which had 4 or more riders. With such a mixture of teams willing to work for the sprints on there squad I decided to allow them to fight it out for the remainder of the race distance while staying out of trouble in the front third of the bunch. The final break away of the day went clear with about 25km to go and the whole peloton watched 5 riders sail away to a 35 second lead. I wasn't in it. Most of the bigger teams weren't represented either. Safe to assume we all thought Max Gear the stronger of the well represented teams would pull the break back, but it wasn't to be.

Having been so active in the earlier sprints I was pretty sure I'd feature at the top end of the sprint competition. Unfortunately a couple of the guys in the break were keen on the prize too, Ryan Pike (High on Bikes) and Richard Watson (Stan’s Cycles) managed to score enough points to over haul my total by just 3 and 2 points respectively, meaning I was leading the sprint classification right up until the final 2 laps. At least I didn't leave empty handed, 3rd in the sprints is nice but 35th overall doesn't look too good on a pal mares.

Again I'd like to congratulate Liverpool Mercury on a fantastically well run event and thank race organiser Fred Chilton for letting me in on such short notice. Results below, photos to follow.

Frank Morgan Memorial Results