11 April 2013

Grass is greener on the Welsh side.

Midweek crit season is here! It's actually the reason for my later than usual entry on the blog, I thought I'd hold out a few days because there was bound to be some crit action to report on... not so unfortunately .

I've been searching in and around Manchester for some midweek crits to keep myself occupied on my days off work. Having grown up with Llandow less than a half hour ride from my parents home in South Wales I had some pretty solid ideas of what midweek crits looked like. I've had to redefine my interpretation of a crit circuit this week. Tameside and Litherland are the nearest tracks to me in Manchester. The 2 circuits are relatively newly built cycling specific tracks. Both turned out to be 2 to 3 meters wide, 1 km long ribbons of tarmac tightly wound around a field with worryingly close football pitches.

Tameside, although well run and a great little track for the kids, was a little too narrow and I ended up finishing somewhere in the bunch having failed miserably the whole race to make any progress up the bunch. The only tactic that seemed to work was barrelling up the inside into the hairpin corner. I'll give Andy Nichols a mention, pulling off 6th on the line the first time round the track ain't too shabby.

Litherland was an utter farce. In true British Cycling fashion entry was a rather high £20 for a 50 minute crit including league affiliation. The 2/3/4 race started late and thanks to a collection of lazy organisers the race was given 5 laps to go after only 10 minutes of racing. Granted only 11 riders turned up to race but if you've advertised you're running an event you bloody well run it. Once the lap board came out there was a genuine air of confusion among us there was no mention of cutting the race short on the start line. In total we raced just under 15 minutes totalling just over 6 miles. to find a silver lining we all scored points on the line, I ended up finishing 6th (after running for 4th in the sprint) thanks to another rider pulling a foot in the last 100 meters.

So thats it, a pretty boring week in total and yet again the form of race organisation in this country showing its true colours with one race official at Litherland being heard to say the words "shall we knock off early then?" On the other side of the coin Forza have a been organising crits at Llandow like its going out of fashion. The full Summer Series is up on the British Cycling website and the accompanying facebook page can be found bellow. Might have to make a few trips back to the valleys for some proper racing this summer.

Sheffrec RR this weekend, another chance for me to show Dean Downing what a really cyclist looks like.

Forza Cycles RT Summer Series

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