Back at Goodwood#

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 16:19:23 +0000

... and, back after Goodwood too. Yesterday it was still aching; today the rest of me also aches, I'm shivering and my throat is complaining: I begin to suspect I may be suffering a cold.

The event benefited from the Camberley crowd's same slick management as they conditioned us to expect last year, and was also notable for the relatively vast numbers of entrants: 213 people! Kudos to them on both counts. It's a nice wide track and no danger of overcrowding.

A practice lap established that the wind had changed direction since last year. The headwind after the first corner seemed much less of a "brick wall" than I remembered from 2006 or 2005, but the flip side was that the wind on the start/finish straight and the downhill leading to it was much stronger.

Off the start, and the lead paceline formed within a few seconds: as usual for British races everyone at the front was the epitome of politeness ("no, I insist you go first"). This lasted until just past the first corner, when James Ashby flew off, with Orgill, McInnerny and Andy Porter following, and Fred and me pursuing but failing to catch. By the time we got to the last corner before the start/finish the rest of the line had caught us too, so we settled down in a mostly LSST line - about eight initially, gradually depleting, including one or two Powersliders (who, all credit to them, were not shirking approximately their fair share of doing the work - or at least, not more so than I was)

This was followed by nine laps in that line. James and Chris lapped us somewhere around lap 8: James slowing very briefly before powering up the warp generators again and disappearing into the distance; Chris hung with us for a couple of laps before taking off again on the back straight on our lap 10 (his 11).

Last lap: the start/finish was marked by similar outbursts of politeness as had been evident at the race start, so we went around the first corner a bit spread out across the road. I was lagging at the back waiting to see who broke first (special eye on Fred). Fred made his move, I followed, Andy followed, I don't know who else was with us at that point. At the water stop, Fred pulled off and I went past - then looked back a few seconds later and found there was a clear gap between me and everyone else. So, reasoning that there was no way I'd win a sprint finish against Andy or Fred and if I had any chance at all it was over a longer distance, I went for it.

Unfortunately, it wasn't enough: the back straight (with a tailwind) is deceptively fast easy skating, and only when I turned back round into the headwind did I realise I didn't have much left. They caught and passed me again at the end of the downhill, and I came in sixth in 1:23:36. Wasn't particularly impressed at the time, but post-race reflection says that everyone in front of me (except Fred) was Cat 1, and I finished within 5 seconds of one of them. So perhaps not that bad really.