I'll be honest the presents of such a big team entering on the line did annoy me more than a little. Mostly because I'd managed to convince myself that (given the list of pre-entered riders and my present form) I stood a fairly good chance of taking the win. In previous years the finish for the Betty Pharaoh has been a short sharp final climb which tends to put me in trouble. This year, however, the finish was going to be a straight sprint. My kind of finish.
Despite pulling my little run down Fiesta into the car park alongside Team UK Youths 2 team BMW's, team van and 9 Cervelo S5's I was undeterred and started jotting down a few numbers of riders to chase. Figuring the best course of action wasn't to just chase every UK Youth jersey that attacked I thought the safest bet was to single out the local boy on the team. Jon Mould. And for a time this tactic worked well. On the road between Wick and Llantwit Jon and another UK Youth lad jumped clear, I took this as my queue along with a few others and we formed a hard working group of 7 that quickly pulled out a lead of 24 seconds.
As we started the descent down into Cowbridge the UK Youth boys got a little work shy. After hitting the sharp left-hander in Cowbridge we began the 18% climb back up onto the A48. I found myself leading up the climb, something was wrong with that image. I love a long climb but short and punchy really isn't my kind of thing. Usually, on this particular climb I pace myself, maybe allow a gap to grow and us my sprint to get back into the group once the climb levels off. But I was still on the front nearing the top.
About 50 metres short of the top of the climb I found out why the UK youth lads weren't so keen to work over the previous few kilometres. A small group of their team mates had managed to bridge the gap and upon catching us decided to up the pace again before I could catch my breath. As it turned out I had just allowed the decisive break away to slip away from me. I chased pretty damn had for about 5 minutes before conceding that I'd lost my chance. The peloton caught me just before the decent of Crack Hill and I was welcomed back to the bunch by yet another Team Youth Attack. I found the energy to follow him from somewhere but I knew that was it for me, I'd gone too deep in the break.
Back in the peloton I tried to compose myself and recover. The next time up the 18% climb the peloton dropped me and yet again I found myself chasing through the following cars for about 10 minutes. I finally got back on and was overwhelmed by a feeling of light headedness; I'd definitely gone too deep.
The next time past the finish line at Llandow I made my way to the back of the bunch and tried to quietly slope off to the car without anyone noticing. Thankfully the event photographer Huw Fairclough managed to capture my white flag moment.
I'm not too upset with the way the race ended for me, after all with only one winter and a few crits back from a pretty poor 2012 I manged to make the right moves tactically and hang onto and (briefly) drive a break away comprised of Elite, 1st, 2nd cat riders. I'm still kicking myself very hard but hopefully I can redeem myself next week at the Mersyside Wheelers event.
Thanks to Huw Fairclough / Short&Round for the photo's of the days racing and to Cardiff Ajax, Chris Landon and Reg Pharaoh for organising a great day out.
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