Back on the 2nd November myself and Allan Hopkins (acting soigneur for the day) made the trip down to the Newport Velodrome for the LVRC (League of Veteran Racing Cyclists) National Track Championships.
The day started well when I realised I had forgotten my racing license (which involved a 40 min detour that we did not have time for !) and proved challenging thereafter.
Having picked up Allan, we then proceeded to set the only record of the day (by me anyway) racing from Reigate to Newport in exactly 2 hours (including a fuel stop).
We just made it to the Velodrome in time to sign on and I had a very brief warm up before the brutal shock to the system that is the 3000m pursuit.
Needless to say without a proper warm up and suffering from every other excuse in the book, it was not my best ever performance and I think I finished 10th or so in the final results.
Having survived a thousand deaths in the closing laps of the pursuit I then had a fairly chirpy attitude towards the normally scary 750m TT (kilo for old men). I guess I felt that nothing worse could happen than I had already suffered in the pursuit and it was only 3 laps after all !
Despite my best efforts and some facial expressions that would scare small children, my time didn't threaten the medals, but to quote the words of a well known Frenchman "at least we had shown the jersey"
All in all we had a fun time and I would encourage anyone to try this championship in the future. Well run by the enthusiatic volunteers and reasonably priced it is certainly one for the diary again next year, albeit with what I hope will be better preparation.