Day 1 of the Blackburn club championships - sprints and pursuits on the program.

Masters are split up into M2, M3, M4 etc (good!) but this means small fields, in M2 there's Nick Bird, Alan Dorin and I.  Nick's a no-show, so Alan and I are into a straight final.  I want to do a F200, and I think Alan does too, so we manage to get one in at the end of the qualifying rounds for the other divisions.  I do a 14.44 (49.9km/h urgh!  dog-slow! I think I wanted a bigger gear, 86.4" was too little, even with that headwind) and Alan does the same time!  Ok ... that'll make the actual match sprint interesting.  Everyone's slow, it's blowing a gale from the north west and swirling around the clubrooms, but it's pretty-much the same for everyone.

Along the way Dino and Mick Thomas qualify for the M3 finals, Mick with the fastest time and Dino the 4th fastest, so Mick's racing Richard Hurley for 1st, and Dino's racing Alan Barnes for 3rd.  Emily sets a great time (16.50 43.6km/h) which stands for some time as the fastest time of the day. J13, J15 ... elite, masters is the order.  Emily's set a faster time than all the J15 girls and some of the J15 boys.  Rob Montheath misses out on qualifying this time.  It's no TSSS round,  so one chance to get through and that's it. Nath's been sick all week and we're glad to just see him up and about, there's no question of him racing today.  He'll save it up for the last TSSS round.

The kids start racing, and get through all their rounds, but when the 1v4 elite race starts it starts to rain, and that's it for the day.  We all hang around hoping it will clear but a few checks with the BoM radar and it's going to rain all afternoon, so the decision is made to call it a day.  We're rescheduled for the masters sprints tomorrow (Sunday) at 1pm, so I race Alan Dorin, and Dino and Mick get to try and take 3rd and 1st place for themselves tomorrow at (a little past) high noon!  Alan has much better endurance than I do, I have to win the toss and keep him pinned to the fence on my hip for 2 laps and make the sprint as short as I can if I'm to beat him. He's going to want to go from the start and gap me early and try and burn me off the back for 3 laps, I have to not let him do it! He'll thrash me in the pursuit and the ITT, but I want the sprint.

The elite riders are going to do their sprints at 11 on the 6th of April (TSSS round 6 day!) so hopefully The Wizard and Jamie will stay and race the TSSS as well.

I started handing out TSSS promo cards for the 2008-2009 series today, Trek's involvement isn't guaranteed yet, but I'm hoping they'll come on board for next season.  The series can only grow I think, and with Trek's help I think it'll be excellent.  We've got some momentum over the last two rounds and I want to carry that through the winter to keep the organising team enthusiastic and get riders looking forward to the first round in October.