Scraping my knees

Today I disappointed myself greatly. It was a 4th Cat race at Hillingdon and all I needed to do was come 6th or better to secure the remaining points required to be promoted to 4th Cat.

The race was much as I expected and generally went according to plan. The riding was "cynical", with no breakaway attempts amounting to anything and the smallish field of about 24 staying pretty much intact for the whole race. I'd intended to just take it easy and loiter near the front, out of the wind for most of the race but inevitably I got stuck into chasing down the more dangerous looking attacks. I felt great - pretty strong with good acceleration. I was feeling pretty confident for the finish.

So when it came around, one of the more aggressive racers made a move and I covered it - then, just before the back straight when I was about to come though, he sat up. As he did this I looked back - a moment of hesitation that had the group pretty much back. Suddenly I found myself on the front no-one in the group interested in coming forward.

I will readily admit that this caught me completely off guard and settling into the back straight I missed the tiny window of opportunity to do something decisive to rescue the situation. Instead I dug the hole deeper and tried to do a quick charge to the line. Inevitably this served merely as a lead out, and in the blink of an eye, four riders were by then a small gap before I counted more than six.

I was caught with my pants down, the speed differential was just too great and I didn't have a second acceleration left in me to do anything about it. Perhaps a true schoolboy mistake; definitely another notch down to experience. But I still can't help feeling great annoyance at "what might have been".

I'm sure after a good sleep and some time to reflect, I'll get over it. Oh well.

Edit (Sun 14 AM):
After sleeping on it, I realise that I missed the first four coming by because I wasn't ready for it. I wasn't in the right gear to kick and I hadn't "cocked" myself. Deer in the headlights. I won't be doing that again.