7 Laps of the Rouvy route “Yokohama Cycle Style”

26 Registered | 14 placed | 3 dnf | 9 dns

On the first Thursday of every month I try to run a Crit race. It’ll be around 20 miles long and is always good fun to get some drafting lapped races in. It creates all types of goals: You can go for the win, try and get top 10, or the main reason to at least NOT GET LAPPED!!😂😂

So after the Warm up, we had 17 riders ready to get this race going, all hoping to get on someone’s wheel to help them get round here in a decent time.

“Simon_Hahnenbrunch” came over the line for the gold medal, with a strong 48 minites total time which resulted in the rider lapping so far up the order he finally overtook 9th place on his last lap!! superb effort. Warm up winner “feelslikemonday” came over the line in 2nd with “PatrykS_Gdynia_PL” just 6 seconds behind in another 3rd place of the night!

Another strong race from “Tom-CV” to claim a very respectable 4th.

The next lot of riders were all bunched up after about 2 laps, with about 7 riders all within 100ft of each other. so how did it end? Muckerworldwide rider “tomlerieger” came home in a superb 5th with team mate “Svard” next, just 4 seconds behind.

“rouvy1bryon” was next in 7th, then “tyrone2526” who, took it nice and easy with me in the warm up race, was a nice 8th place. Another muckersworldwide.com rider “shrek-1970-challenger” was next in 9th, then, in what I believe to be the most important place😉, was “Mucker1974” in 10th!!😉🙄 ( yep, that’s me )

From my point of view I had an interesting race. I was with the 7 strong group for a while, but I got dropped around the end of lap 3 as it was just too hot a pace and just ended up stuck recovering in 12th, and not really getting anywhere. A lap later Someone dropped out, so I got moved up to 11th and started to feel a bit more normal. Then I saw that “Kin-Kwan” ,who was in 10th, had been dropped by the pack and I was catching him. I spent nearly 2 laps trying to close the gap and I eventually got on his wheel, only for him to open up a 400ft gap on me and I again thought it was all over. But, Some quick study of the map made me realise that 1st place was going to lap me on my lap 6 if I just let off a little and maybe, just maybe, I could jump on his wheel and get dragged back up to have another go at 10th place. “Simon_Hahenbrunch” came past and I hugged the heck out of his wheel and the plan worked! Now, if “Kin-Kwan” had put in an effort to stay with the 1st place rider as we caught him, then he’d have had me as I was spent when we got up to him, but he didn’t and I was able to recover in his draft. About 0.7 of a mile from the end, we had a slight incline and I did a little tester break and it worked! No reaction from him so I kept it on and got a nice 200ft gap which I kept all the way home to get 10th! Just saying……🚴‍♂️🚴‍♂️

There’s always something going on in a Crit and its never over till you cross the line!

A per usual, any thoughts on this race please post them for the rest of us to enjoy reading. Thank you.