A dry night at PIR

Monday PIR, Masters Cat 4/5

Lowdown:14 laps, counterclockwise, 2 primes.
Teammates: Quiet Achiever and Curtis.

No rain for a change and field was larger than usual. One could sense that those that had stayed away during the rainy race days were eager to make up for lost ground. This was clear at the first prime sprint when I was left well behind and beaten to the line by many racers bent on getting those 3,2,1 points.

The pace of the race seemed high and full of aggression with attack after attack coming throughout the race. Feeling good and rested I got out of the saddle and attacked one and a half laps before the second prime. Three came with or bridged the gap. Soon we were perhaps 100M off the front. Our group quickly became organized and we traded pulls and kept the pace high – one rider couldn’t or wouldn’t maintain the pace and dropped back. We were still well ahead with half a lap to the sprint as I took the lead, resigned to pulling all the way to the line. We were caught by 4 or 5 about 30M before the line. Bollocks !!- we had nearly made it. The pack had timed their chase well and it took an all out, balls out sprint to catch us. Although disappointed about not taking the prime points, I was delighted to have made them work hard to chase inflicting suffering in the process. Bwahhaahahaha.

Once the pack regrouped the attacks continued but were efficiently chased down. Then it was the final lap. I was situated on Curtis’ wheel about 5 wheels back with QA around to my right also close to the front. By the time I was in the final straight I had lost Curtis’s wheel and found myself behind KB from BBC. He is a good sprinter and usually a good leadout but I found myself fighting for his wheel. Quite embarrassingly, I yelled to the guy to my left that “I have KB’s wheel”. Startled, he backed off and opened up a gap to the left. I took the opportunity to sprint past KB. The sprint was timed a bit early and I faded towards the line but squeaked into 9th place. I was reasonably pleased with this result because it was a strong field and didn’t have the best leadout. Best part for me was initiating, organizing and holding a decent break. This was a new experience. The QA had an excellent race and grabbed second place without much fanfare. That is why he is the Quiet Achiever!