Prix de Valentin

felt much better this race after a bit of riding the past week. The race was a another cat 1 race and was 130km of a 22km loop, the loop included a 1.5km hill and heaps of short pinches. there were 140 odd people starting the race so was a very big field. my race plan was just to sit in and see how my legs felt as i havnt done many big rides in the past weeks. the first kms were hectic with everyone fighting for position at the front on such a tight course. there were people crashing very often and the sound of carbon cracking as someone went down was very frequent. i had alot of near misses and had 2 guys go down right in front of me but i was lucky to ride through the middle of them. i managed to spend most of the race at the front only occasionally slipping back.
There were a few breaks that went but nothing would stick for very long, then at about half way a break with my team mate clement got away and was away for 60km but on the last lap the bunch was hauling and the break was puled back real quick. then last time up the hill i hit the front and went with an attack and by the top i was in group of three, we rolled together for a bit but were caught by a group of 30 or so. I was unsure exactly were the finsh was as we turned of the lap course for a couple kms to the finish, so was really hard to judge when to put in another attack as was feeling good, turns out the finish was closer than i thought and rolled in with a bunch of 25ish for about 20th place.
was pretty happy with my race as was felling good on the hills and finally starting to get my race legs back.
cheers
Sam