What a day......2nd in the scratch and Handicap, 3rd in the progressive points race and 2nd overall for the day. I am rapt with this considering that I had been up since 3.00am this morning with really bad gastro and around 2 hours sleep. At 12.30pm I was a 50/50 chance of racing

today, at 1pm I packed my gear thinking that I will at least try and race in the 1st race and see how I go.

However it almost ended up in disaster......earlier this week I took my bike to the local bike shop, I have just purchased some new cranks that are 135pcd and needed a bottom bracket. I picked the bike up on the way to BBN and did few warm up laps, the motor pace had just passed me and I was going to hop on the back , then next thing my back wheel completed stopped. I was so lucky that I was not thrown over the handle bars or that I was not in the middle of the motor pace as I could have caused a pretty serious accident. The cause, my local bike shop had not tightened the screws on the back wheel! I was telling Pat Doherty and he told me to always check your bike and make sure your happy with everything before you ride when someone has adjusted it. Sounds pretty obvious, but lesson learnt, I will never do that again.

I also got some great advise today from Carl, in the first heat of the handicap I did what I needed to do to make the final. Carl told me to pay attention to the riders behind me as the 2 guys that were behind me basically sat on my wheel for most of the race and let me do all the work. He said to make sure you swing up the bank and let them work as well. It worked in the final, I swung up the bank a few times and sat on the back and attacked on the last lap. I was completely pretty spent and there was no chance of catching Pat, however I was pretty satisfied with the result just on a few tactical decisions.

I am still learning with each race, but am having a ball as well!