Sunshine, Wind, Hail, Rain and Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory in London.

Circuit racing is big in the UK, plenty of closed circuits that provide plenty of events and highly animated racing. The March Hare was a particularly long one with plenty of action.

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Here at Le Valley Val park for the march here which the race I think there’s a bit lot of history to the race one lap to go for the women TR I’m doing the E12 and um which will be it’s 40 laps about an hour and a half

And I’ve not bought enough food for it cuz I just getting out the door nowadays with two kids is requires AIT less thought about the bike and a bit more thought about getting out the door two kids so um yeah looks like just some good guys here there’s a few teams it’s

Very windy which helps I unfortunately I’m not allowed to put a GoPro on the bike such are the rules um was a bit disappointing but is what it is so it won’t be any uh how twos coming from this video but uh yeah we’ll just enjoy the day I’ve got an

Entourage here my family has my niece has a mascot from school she has to show something exciting they did on the weekend so they’ve come to come to a bicycle race in East London anyways going to hand the camera over to Dad D and uh let him film not

All of the race from here but some of it some look [Applause] [Applause] That uh got lost in the bunch at the end yeah and uh yeah 21st in first cut uh or first uh crit race ever nice nice headwind finish headwind finish yeah you’ll leave it late yeah but not too late left it too late yeah after the Finish l l learning curves [Applause] [Applause] cool [Applause] Yes yeah yeah yeah [Applause] Interesting okay you going to win no maybe who knows who knows who knows see you later best of luck yeah see you later right let’s get into this going to uh try something new here with just a voice over the race uh my plan from the

Start was to chill out near the back it was even though this is a criterian style race it was a long one like we were looking at an hour and a half for the race so thought a lot of these guys will be used to the hour plus uh five

Laps or an hour plus a lap or two so I thought you know things would happen in the latter half I’ve done this circuit at Lee Valley on a TT bike in a 10m TT I’ve never done it in a bunch so there was also a case of just getting a bit of

The lay of the land you know um so chilled out around the back I know my mom and dad were like what is he doing and the family had come to watch so I think they expected fireworks here’s my youngest uh nephew Ted um so things started moving there was uh

Flry of attacks nothing ever got too far the wind was uh kind of Tailwind headwind on the back straight and then the home straight and then the corners were pretty uh pretty good it’s a very flowing circuit there’s uh very little breaking needed until the rain came down

Um so it’s about taking lines trusting trusting your tires and uh yeah and I think notoriously the circuit breakaways don’t often happen I didn’t know that but I was very much um you know it’s just fast and when it’s fast it’s hard to get away when there’s

Little stop starting and and quite a reasonably there’s a few undulations in this circuit but nothing too taxing so I think here we’re starting to see I’m starting to move that’s me with the red helmet in pink trying to wind up a an attack in uh the crosswind was coming slight

Crosswind from the right side and you can see it’s it’s gone but this this was to no avail this was my first move of the race so I think I kind of expected it to be jumped on um it came about 20 minutes into the race and we can yeah in

Terms of the effort it was roughly like a minute at kind of 560 watts to try and move something away um but yeah to no avail but it did spread everyone out a bit um and and yeah so I settled back in I was like I don’t I still don’t think I

Think it’s a bit too it’s just too easy to be getting away and the average speed was too high I mean the numbers from the day bearing in mind it did rain and it did end up uh split into pieces it was still a 45 km

An hour average for the race which is quick um so yeah excuse me uh um a move did then go and it was dangerous and I thing this was a solo Rider who got away by himself um yeah a move did go with a lot of riders which was which was a pretty

Pretty dangerous one here you go and there was just no cohesion behind to try and Chase it down everyone was kind of looking at each other to chase it so I was like this is this is going to be a difficult one to play like do I try and

Go across by myself or with one or two two others just really hard and get it done or do I try and get the group to start chasing and I kind of thought the i i to be honest I risked just sitting and waiting for a little bit longer

Really to see if that Gap in front was too big cuz you’re also relying on them working well together up front and it was quite a few Riders so when you do get more than four or five you’re going to have some Riders already thinking about trying their luck and sitting on

Waiting for the waiting for the Finish really to be as freshh as possible and then that creates like a disgruntled atmosphere in the break and then everyone starts skipping turns and then the move comes back but nonetheless it was a little bit unnerving so as you can see they were they were

Pretty cohesive up front you had Frank longstaff who’s who’s a wicked Sprinter and he’s he’s got some form on him at the moment so it was it was dangerous there was not not many teams in the race so you it was very much individuals trying to balance making big efforts to

Try and win whilst also trying to preserve uh preserve themselves for the finish this is have n Margo who had a mascot to bring to something interesting for a weekend so they bought a um ah so they they bought them on a train to a bike race here come comes the rain and

That turned everything on its head for me I really thought right the rain is the leveler suddenly the corners become far trickier to they they actually become significant points of of selection perhaps cuz everyone suddenly different levels of nerves going through corners so it’s easier for gaps to

Appear breaking is required on the corner so for me this was like right it’s time to go and I booted it as hard as I could got across to the move with uh two other because it required um what did it require it required I’m just looking at my training Peaks now around

340 watts for 10 minutes to with you know whilst working with two others to get across to that front group who who were riding pretty good and it was you know by now this is you can almost argue that this is the pelaton um a very very

Strong group up front that were riding hard uh I think just with the weather it makes it grittier and you it’s far harder to try and recover so everyone’s really looking at um looking I I once I got on I did try and stay unnoticed I didn’t want the everyone to expect me

Not cuz it’s me but just I try to be Incognito for a while hope that the people working at the front would not know that three other Riders had joined their group um and thus go well you can do some work I just wanted to remain at

The back of that group for a while see what happened and the good thing with the circuit is you could get reference points to the group behind like you could you could see them you could see if you were gaining you were losing so you can see here I’m just trying to sit

As as far back as possible recover recover cuz that that 10-minute effort did did take it out of me a bit and then it was about around about the halfway mark in the race uh 45 minutes in that I managed to to go clear and it was a

Concerted effort to go clear just really railed some Corners put the hammer down out of them stretched him thin and got away with a chap named Leo and a another chap named Alex Alex gal him um Leo informed me after the race it he’d actually raced at Milton kings that

Morning so that man is won for some punishment so uh yeah these were the last couple of laps that I remained in the field we’re still about I’m still 35 40 minutes into the race here uh so there there’s still a fair way to go and now we’re away and this was super

Cohesive work from the three of us we swapped turns I I’ll be honest I tried to manipulate it a bit so I had the corners because I felt the corners were the easiest uh was the easiest turn to take but I wanted us to do long turns rather than short turns because short

Turns the three of you are just riding side by side together I mean thr and off as a three is is an Absol waste of energy so um and Leo unfortunately he uh told me that he was struggling I thought he might have been bluffing so I

He he did a couple of laps of really just sat on doing nothing this too far to go to just sit on for third place he did tell us he would be taking third place but I was like it’s too far to go for third place and took him out the

Back and he was not bluffing anyway my dad unfortunately did not capture the finish so it came down to a Sprint with me and Alex and he fully pulled my trousers down with 300 M to go uh tucked me up good and proper and that was the

Race why cuz that guy was better than him he had a Sprint okay he had a Sprint in him and he’s obviously blood good Hang On by the first five laps she’s at the defitely I um I raced I KN I knew normally yeah put a bit

More I think when when you started doing like nothing I was like yeah I like the I just think I needed like three laps just to get bit back Nick your Mas nice day out yes yes I heard you were with an absolute weapon off the front yeah I mean there were the two alexes in the Breakaway so every time we we heard a cheer there’s a cheer for both of us which probably help

Nice ride thank you thank you in third place Tim Tor congratulations in second place might have a big future Alex git and in first place I’m sure you give him a warm Round of Applause a great ride by Alex delpin [Applause] right that’s that um that was surprising

That went surprisingly well as soon as the hail and the rain came down I moved and moved hard because um it sort of it’s a it’s a leveler it’s less about strategy more about strength and I was like if I’ve got it I’ve got it if I

Haven’t I haven’t luckily I had it and then right at the end got fully worked over by another Alex which was good he properly caught me napping I don’t really do two up Sprints and not experienced at them I’ve never really done them that was fun and that did go

Better than I thought to be honest we probably could have eased up a little bit earlier than we did but group behind was was moving I don’t think we ever had more than 20 seconds such as crit racing so yeah I was I was more worried about

That than the Sprint at the end and yeah dy over good and profit but second place I’ll take that that’s nice so nice to have a lot of the family out to watch as well so could believe it was hailing not so long ago would you yeah crazy yeah so was uh

My family get a train home it’s good little circuit that I GED um couldn’t film it although with actually it started hailing that i’ have been wiping the camera lens an awful lot yeah there was three of us which and the the third chat out of nowhere just said off I’m blowing and

Started to sit on and bit that alarmed me he’s like I’ll be happy with third and part of me didn’t buy it cuz he went from pulling really strong to go like one sort of slightly easier pull and then just went nope I’m not doing anything and so I tried to maneuver it

So he had the corner the corners which were a bit easier than the Straits like to do returns at the front but he uh yeah it didn’t happen and then we still had like a quarter of the race to go so then I was like I said I

Said do the corners and yeah didn’t and so after doing a turn I was like mate I said you got to you got to do something like something anything just a little bit and that’s the thing when someone’s sat on yeah it’s always up to you what you doing a race but when

Someone’s like sat on he’s off let a gap go I figured if he’s sandbagging he’ll jump on to the other Alex with me and if he’s not sand and then he won’t and he didn’t so then there was just two of us but that removes the question the other

Alex and I well I think we both pulled as hard as we could which was it was just fair which was great he was super strong he was real real young uh very surreal after the Finish when he said he was he’s like 10 pages away from

Finishing my book that’s not getting any less weird someone saying that so feels like he knows my life story um yeah very strange but uh no no race um come home 40 quid better off I think the entry was not much less than 40 quid so at least we’re up not

Including petrol but yeah nice race it is a nice circuit surprisingly grippy in the wet I feel it was pretty safe actually as well like everyone gave each other space yeah with the wind did make it quite difficult quite cold I am still cold heated seats are going to go on

Pretty quick in the car and yeah we’re going to be back here next week here for the Good Friday track meeting getting back on a track I got a pretty wicked bike to show you soon it’s not specialized specialized don’t make track bikes but uh it’s pretty Cool I think the last thing actually before I do close this video out is that event was run by uh the fall gas company which do a lot of the events here at Le Valley uh I don’t know if they do anything at Red Bridge Cycling Center Hog Hill certainly do at Hillingdon

And utilize the valdrome as well and track league in the winter which I’m going to be doing this winter so that’s and that’s uh Tony Gib who’s a name from the past and a name that divides a lot of opinions uh I like him but I know

Some people that don’t and I think he would be fine if he watches this I’d imagine he’s sat there right now in his Lounge kind of smirking at the the people that uh perhaps don’t like him over the years um maybe that’s not fair I don’t know but yeah he commentated my

First hour record because he’s to me he’s a massive cycling fan like loves the sport very knowledgeable about the sport you know he knows he knows his stuff he was a phenomenal Comon haor at my hour record and I also when I was a junior broke a broke his

Front lightweight wheel and those that no lightweights mean that’s not a simple spoke replacement that is a um say fatal a fatal fatal er a fatal break and he still seems to think I’m all right so take that anyway thanks for watching thanks to full gas for organizing and molden hilly in the Morning