Saturday 22 December saw my last race of 2007 and I’m not going to even pretend I covered myself in glory. I finished somewhere in the midfield of the twenties and was being passed by a fair few people coming out of the final bend.
I rode well and aggressively throughout the race but I tried to go from a long way out and ended up leading a bunch of people out. My friend Ollie had recommended his dad’s maxim for racing when you don’t have a sprint, which was “Be the first to attack at the last possible moment.”
As it happens that worked out well for me as I avoided a crash that happened in the bunch behind me. It’s something of an occupational hazard of not getting out of the 4th Cats that there will almost always be a crash, no matter how open the course. Likewise there’ll always be someone who brakes into an easy corner or eases up suddenly causing a concertina effect down the bunch.
The best way to avoid such things is to make sure you are nowhere near then when they happen and in the first 10 to 15 places in the line at the front. That much I’ve mastered now, after a season of too many lapses in concentration. Now I just need to concentrate on being up there and in the points at the line, not 200 metres before it.
I’m a bit frustrated that I’m not going to get to race again for a while. I’m working this weekend which rules out one possible opportunity and with New Year and my snowboarding holiday the week after that I’m not going to race again until mid-January. Which gives me plenty of time to concentrate on getting my weight down and my fitness up so that I can make 2008 a decent year for me.