Race Results

16/07/2012 - DERRICK WOODINGS' LVRCTRACK CHAMPS BLOG

Location :

Results :

LVRC National Track Championships Newport Velodrome July 6 th. - 7 th

Back again at the Newport Velodrome. I was travelling alone this week as Mike was going on to ride a road race on Sunday in North London. I had entered my usual 3 events the scratch and points distance races over 10k and the 2k pursuit. Mick had only entered the pursuit and scratch events on the first day, opting to travel over to London on Saturday. After last weekend this was to be my final attempt at redeeming my pursuit career. I had made my mind up that if I failed to post a reasonable time I would abandon this event in future.
The first events on the program were the pursuits starting at 12 noon. The races started with the younger age categories first progressing on to our groups later in the afternoon. Mick was first up. Although the pursuit is normally a man to man race with two riders on opposite sides of the track, these races were run as a time trial, with the fastest time being the winner. Mick was on the track with fast man Graham Truelove (Lichfield). Mick immediately took a one second advantage on the first lap but never increased this lead Graham fighting back each time to hold the two riders level until on lap 8 Mick put in a superb last lap edge out Graham with a splendid 2:31.9 time for the 2k. just over one second short of a world record for his age, which is a target for the World Masters in October. As Graham is in a lower age cat to Mick this was a tremendous performance and could see him challenging for a World Champions gold medal. Mick actually finished in front of Dave Rutherford (Solihull) for his cat. win, Dave posting 2:36.85. My race came soon after and I was riding solo on the track as there were an uneven number of entries, so I had no marker to reference against. However I had opted to ride to a schedule of lap 1: 25secs and the rest at 20 secs, which should run out at 2: 45. I ended up with 2:44.07, an incredible 8 second improvement from last weekend. So I have now decided that I need to concentrate on better preparation for this specialised event, although not to the exclusion of my favourite distance events. Incidentally this time would have won me a gold last week in the BC Championships, but that’s pure speculation as I felt much better this week and was a little better prepared. The scratch races later on Friday were less productive for both of us, Mick coming second behind his rival in the pursuit, Dave Rutherford. I made a few tactical errors and instead of pressing an advantage which presented itself with 3 laps to go, I hesitated and waited for the sprint where arch rival Roly Crayford(Gravesend) beat me by a length.
As Mick was not riding Saturday it was left to me to contest the last event the 5k points race. It was almost a non event as I had a bad attack of food poisoning Friday evening, which left me not too well in the morning. Fortunately the points race was late in the afternoon and I had time to recover, but not having eaten since mid-day on Friday I was not sure how I would go. By the time I got up to ride I was feeling reasonable so made an attempt to perform and was pleasantly surprised to win all the sprints for points and thus the race in front of Arja Scarsbrook (Wales).
To sum up, the championships were run off very well and on time. I must praise the young assistance got together by Courtney Rowe who were responsible for operating to scoreboard and organising the competitors in their respective events a job well done.
My competitor of the weekend must be Steve Davies(Ferrybridge) who won all the events he had entered. My one little gripe is losing out to Chrissie Higgs in pursuit timings, although she didn’t humiliate me this week, I was only 0.06 seconds slower than her this time.