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@andyp
Round 7 of the London X League at Addington Park today.
The course was entirely in a grass parkland but, partly due to the weather, was a challenging and fun one to ride. It rained heavily for a good hour before the race, making conditions extremely slippery.
I was gridded and managed to get a spot on the front row and got away well, but the first corner came quickly and I got a bit swamped, then struggled with grip on the exit so lost a few places and was in a tussle with a few riders on the spiral with a bit of bumping and bashing. (This may have been where I got the mysterious injuries to my calf and just above my right knee that I discovered under the mud after the race - I don't know where else they could have come from!) Things settled down and I had a clean first lap, benefitting from riding the large double hump as whilst some others got through it faster on foot, I was much quicker on the section afterwards and regained my place.
On the second lap I was in a group of five and we moved away from the chasing pack, but I got stuck behind the one rider in the group whose cornering skills weren't as good as the rest and it took me the whole of the descent to get past him, only to get caught up in the tape at the mound and had to dismount and unhook it from my saddle, so spent the next lap chasing him and overtaking him again on the descent. This time I made it stick and set about chasing the two riders from the five who were ahead.
I steadily reeled them in on the next lap then used the three straights before the start/finish line to get back up to them, then set about testing them on the uphill sections. I quickly gapped one then spent the next lap trying to gap a rider from Eastbourne, which I finally did on the straights before the start/finish.
I spent the rest of the race chasing George Higgs from Crawley Wheelers but despite closing to within about 10 seconds on the penultimate lap, couldn't get catch him.
I think I was in the top ten again, just, but given I spent yesterday morning moving 4 bulk bags of manure in a wheelbarrow, was very happy with how I went. I also managed to avoid crashing which, given the conditions, was a surprise.