I hate headwinds. actually, I hate any winds, with the honourable exception of the tailwind. Being built somewhat “square-rigged”, to borrow a sailing term, I catch a lot of wind no matter where I hide in a bunch. I’m gettnig better at avoiding it, but in a break you have no choice.
Which is where I found myself on Tuesday at Hillingdon. I’ve made a point of working hard and trying to get into the breaks, or at least chase them down, the last couple of weeks. Part of it is about testing myself and proving that I can race aggressively, part of it is about pushing myself to my limits and not just sitting in for an hour but animating the race a bit.
As you might guess from the title of this post, it hasn’t helped me with scoring a point yet. The last break I went for ended into the headwind and the surprise of the “2 laps to go” board. The pair of us who had jumped both muttered obscenities at such a cruel trick of fate. If it had been three left we might have had time to recover and place but two was no time to get back into a point-scoring position after a hard dig.
Nor did it help that someone went down just before the bell. On the straight, going slightly uphill into the wind. How do people do this? Washing out the front wheel (which is what looked like the cause) really takes effort in a straight line. The result was that I got caught behind it, managed to nip round the carnage but stilll found myself off the back of the sprint as a result.
Next week will be my last chance at points for a few weeks so I’ll need to concentrate, no attack as much and make sure I’m in the right place at the bell.