By Brit,
We had a rather disasterous start to the Town Centre Crit with Karen managing to snap her fork clean in half which we all think was due to previous crash damage and also a bent a spoke as the track pump slipped off her handlebars into the wheel. With the race preparations taking a frantic twist Rob was put into bat with his mechanical skills to find and fix a bike up to Karens use. With the forks from Charlottes Dads bike not fitting correctly Karen ended up riding Charlottes 14 year olds brothers bike! Not ideal!..The next stage of carnage happened in the warm up lap with a Windy Millar rider taking a hard tumble on one of the tight corners in practise and was consequently carted off in an ambulance which delayed are start by 20 mins, shorting our race from a 50min race to a 40 min race. All wishing the Windy Millar a quick recovery as she flew past in the ambulance, we all lined up and set off. It was a fast a furious first few laps with Lauren from Champion system nailing the first corner stringing it out straight away. Iona broke off a couple of times during the race and looked strong taking to the front of the race on various occasions. I feel this was her best performance of the year as she looked comfortable, competitive and strong. I kept myself tucked in the bunch as I felt I had a good chance of getting a win in this stage and made sure I covered any excellerations of pace. Hannah Walker was on fire taking all the primes which I left as I was after a really good result not the money in this race so didn't want to expend too much energy. Towards the end of the race a guernsey rider broke away and it took a big effort to drag this one back with Iona and Hannah Walker doing a good portion of the work. Coming onto the final lap I made sure I was in a good position for the sprint 3rd wheel back and all looked to be going well until we rounded the corner and collided with a whole load of lapped riders on the finishing straight, avoiding any crashes we weaved in and out of the lapped riders over the finish line with Hannah Walker taking the win, Lauren taking 2nd, Me taking 3rd and Iona taking 4th. I was rather frustrated as I felt I couldn't open up a sprint due to the carnage and feel I may have had a better chance at the win if we had had a clear path but to stand on the podium was great! Karen did amazingly well on a bike that was completely the wrong size so hats off to her for being such a trooper and Charlotte did well considering she's only just turned a junior! It was a great atmosphere and race and I think we all enjoyed it aside the bike disasters!
