Not a vast field last night, as you would expect with the mighty England (lol) playing. Around 30-35 odd I reckon?
I think in all there were likely round 8 or so wheelers (and a few doing the time trial Hounslow host!), there were I think around 5 groups in total, some as small as 3, and some of the larger ones nearer 8-10 people. I was in the scratch group with Alex Tinsely of Twickehmam, Peter Hitt of VCM (who won Dunsfold), another VCM I didn’t know and James Local of Dynamo. It didn’t take long before we caught a few groups in front of us. I tried to make sure there were at least a few of us still rolling through to keep the momentum up, there were many reluctant to do so, or were not able to do so. As the laps counted down we gradually caught everyone, I had a few digs to get away, but nobody was willing to give a proper turn when they came over with me. Giving it was meant to be for training I probably did more work than I needed to, including dragging the bunch up the drag at 500w, which I certainly did NOT need to do, but did anyway. It came to 2 laps to go and we were now down to a minute to the front two, our bunch had thinned a bit as a few got distanced, but by and large I think nearly everyone who signed on was now part of this big group.
With one lap to go they still had 40 seconds, which was good going, but a testament to the mucking about in our bunch as nobody was willing to do all that much, too many people wanting a bunch sprint probably, I lifted the pace a couple of times to try and inject some impetus, and Damien attacked on the drag which Colin went with, and we had a gap for a while but again not enough commitment and the course was too quick at this point to allow us much of a gap. At this point I thought we probably would not likely catch the front 2, or if we did, it would be on the line.
As we approached the final corner, which is a horrid thing, sharp left over a broken road surface I was keen to maintain a position near the front, while I didn’t have many doubts I was quicker than the rest in a sprint, all too many times I’d messed things up down to positioning, so I was on the white line, which meant if anyone wanted to come round, they had to go on the other side of the road, and with a car coming, I knew this was not going to happen.
With the line in sight we could see the 2 men just about to cross over, good ride from them, we were fighting for 3rd. VCM had numbers at the front, and Local of Dynamo was also up there. Peter Hitt led it out, early, I got onto the wheel of Pembroke (I think?) and waited til I thought we were close enough, the VCM from the scratch group jumped and got clear, I followed and went through a gap just in front of Local to go clear and take the bunch sprint, I understand VCM had 4 or 5 in the top 10! I think Perhaps Cameron got up for a top 10?
Good fun, woke my legs up a bit after the time trialing I’ve been doing the last few weeks. Good showing from KW, unsure of results at this stage but certainly most of KW were in the sharp end.
First Season Racing 
Leave a Reply