Riding country lanes

About 30km from here, to the west of Leicester is the Mallory Park racetrack used for motor sports.Every tuesday evening the track holds a circuit race and I felt it was close enough to ride to as a warm up before the race. I found it on the map and the British cycling federation website easily, and had done a short recce / training ride the day before in the area. With a photocopied map in my back pocket I did a 50km zig zag trip, through the back roads and country lanes. I got completely F#&* lost, all the lanes look the same and I recognised nothing from the day before. The following tuesday I did the same warm up and also got completely lost, my mental compass has gone for a ball... the lanes twist and turn, leading me past the same old boy sitting at a bus stop for the third time!!

Thank goodness I arrived at the circuit and was reassured that there was little chance of me getting lost during the race as long as I followed the same direction as all the other riders!! The racing at Mallory Park starts at seven in the evening , with a smallish fields of 30 to 40 starters. The late evenings make for cooler conditions with the heat being kept up by the one or two man breaks going off the front. The pace is high but not as aggressive as the racing in the US. I find it fairly easy to go across to the breaks and manage to stay away for a lap or two before being brought back by the group. Im surprised to see a SA national jersey in the peleton, and we get chatting in (poor) afrikaans as to who to watch in the breaks. Turns out the youngster picked the jersey up in Cape Town and has been in the UK for sometime.

The race conditions are perfect and even though I did not contest any of the final sprints, the racing left me feeling I had had a good work out , either that or the three weeks of holidaying, late nights, sight seeing and fast food has taken their toll.