Midlands Rd 2

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BY: phil Morris

Published: 20th March, 2012

Round 2 of the Midlands was a last minute entry for me as I was working nights the night before and the night of the race, so it would involve a 3.5 hr trip from Port Talbot and return straight after the race! Plus it had been 8 days since I had last been on my bike due to a ski holiday, so probably not ideal preparation. But as the first round of the national series is fast approaching!! I was keen to get a race under my belt!  So I was lucky to have a space saved by old team mate Mr Hampshire as the event was another sell out!

I arrived at the event at about 1130 and got myself sorted and signed on. I managed to catch the female podiums which involved teammate Verity Appleyard taking a win in the Female Expert Cat. So the pressure was on now!

I headed out for a practise at about 1230 and the course was good fun, with plenty of mud! But there wasn't a great deal of climbing which could be a good thing for me as my legs may have struggled to cope!

My race start was at 2pm behind the Elites, been a newbie to the expert cat I haven't got much of an idea who I need to keep an eye on as yet, but I'm learning fast. I think there were about 12 of us in total. As this was my first midlands I wasn't gridded so I started at the back. On the gun I had an ok start getting myself up into about 4th. The pace felt very fast to me, but I was determined to hold on to the leaders. I managed this quite well only losing a small gap to the 2 front men! I soon managed to get up into 3rd and had the leaders in sight. No time to ease up though, come the end of the first lap it was all very tight. On the second lap one of the leading 2 had a problem and pulled out. This put me up into 2nd behind John Hopkinson, and the guys behind me were not easing up at all!

At the start of lap 3 I had managed to get a reasonable gap on 3rd and 4th but couldn't seem to make any head way on bridging the gap to John, but wasn't losing any time either!

Lap 4 and I felt that I had made a slight gain but not really enough, and John certainly wasn't slowing much!

At the start of lap 5 I was starting to feel it and the legs were telling the head that I was running out of fuel!! I still had John in sight but still couldn't really make any gains. Going into the final straight I could see John going into the arena so other than a stray dear knocking him off his bike I knew that he had it in the bag!
I finished in 2nd which I was very pleased with, as my lap times were fairly good and so far this year training has been a struggle. Maybe less is more after all!!

Maybe I was missing my mascots cheering me on, they might have spurred me on to take the win! well that's what they think anyway!!

All that was left to do now was to apologise to James and Nadine for not been able to stay for the podium and quickly get dressed and jump back in the car for the 3.5hr journey back to work!! For the record I will never do this again as it nearly killed me!

As always great event and I've given myself a bit of a confidence boost for Sherwood this weekend. Which I will need as I've never had a good result there! So here's hoping.

Picture thanks to Rob Crayton

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Phil Morris