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Castle Combe Crits

Location: Castle Combe, Bath

  • 09/06/11
  • 16/06/11
  • 30/06/11
  • 07/07/11
  • 14/07/11

Castle Combe Criterium Series runs throughout the summer every Thursday evening and attracts a large amount of riders each week. They run races for all ages and abilities from youth riders to elite professional senior riders. Castle Combe is a motor racing circuit situated in a quaint little village about 15 minutes from the M4 motorway; It usually takes my 45 minutes to get there from my house in Newport. It seems that the only way I will get to race regularly is by going over the Severn Bridge every weekend and every Thursday evening as there is no racing for 1st category or elite riders in Wales which is a real shame.

Although a mid week race doesn’t sound like a big deal compared to some of the bigger weekend race but this series is very competitive with some big teams and quality riders racing every week. I have been luck and managed to get two wins in the series so far and also numerous top 10 positions. The racing is always fast with riders trying to establish a break away and with teams trying to control the racing. I have been pretty good this year with racing tactics and have managed to get in most of the breaks.

It is also useful to have team mate Lee Williams at some of these events as we can work together and it also takes the pressure of chasing if your team mate is up the road. The one event that we dominated was on a chilly Thursday evening where the commissaries kept us on the start line for ages so every one was cold and was looking for an easy start to warm up. I decided to smash it from the start with Lee and we soon got a gap with a couple of other riders. The bunch never saw us again and I took the win thanks’ to the one lap lead out from Lee and he still managed to take 3rd spot!

The series will come to an end soon with only 3 more races left. I will try my best to make the events as it is one of my main training sessions as my work commitments usually hinder my training. I also no for a fact that I would not train as hard as I would racing as there is minimal incentive at the end of a training ride as there is compared to crossing a finish line.

Ben

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