Sometimes just finishing a race is a good result, even if you’re comfortably outside the points. Saturday’s 4th Cat Surrey League race at MOD Chertsey was one of those.
It was a generally dull race – one club sent about five riders up to the front and then blocked relentlessly – with the only real racing coming off the final bend to the finish. We endured people coming across without bothering to come round first, the bunch being backed up and people jumping on the brakes through wide-open, downhill corners. Maybe people are too scared to make an attack or maybe no one could get one to stick.
The result was that coming off the final downhill bend there was still nearly a full field thinking they could score a point. That’s 75 relatively green riders all trying to sprint like their life depended on it. And that meant there were always likely to be incidents. Unfortunately there were and they both looked pretty severe: I saw at least one bike that was a total writeoff and some fairly badly bashed riders as well.
You can see the carnage here: http://www.dgs-photography.co.uk for an idea of what the last of those crashes was like. Not pretty at all.
I managed to avoid both by being a bit too far back and coming from the right. I guessed it might be a bit safer over that side and it looks like I was right. I finished somewhere in the 12= slot, about 20th or so. I’m happy with it, even though I had hoped to score a point, as I finished intact and manged to get home again in one piece as well.
Tomorrow night is Hillingdon and it looks like there could be rain. I’m not sure what the form is if it does but I know that I quite enjoy wet weather racing more than most people do. If it means a smaller field as well then I might finally be in with a chance of a point…