Chain gang. A view from the front (well near it anyway)

My Wednesday evening started as usual meeting up with Barny at his house in Ore for one of our errr ‘steady’ rides to the chain via Battle, down through Catsfield, up to Ninfield then through the Bronx (Sidley) and on to the start of the chain. This steady pre chain warm up as usual quickly descended into full on race pace breakaway training that apparently I had started ( as if an excuse were needed! ). This was true actually and I wished I hadn’t as Barny was in top form on the night and made me suffer for it!
On arriving at the shelter we both had a rice cake for energy (very pro) courtesy of Suze and chatted about the wind! We set off with Barny and I two abreast leading at quite a pace with, at the time I wasn’t sure but have been told about seven riders. The wind immediately started to hurt! On the turn up Southcliff  the ever powerful Neil Shier and the amazing Ruth hit the front and stretched us out. We all stayed together though until Herbrand, after taking a turn and a couple of rotations later the unbelievably low and aero Barny powered through and I just couldn’t catch his wheel and off he went thirty metres up the road. Now we have a challenge! Feeling it a bit and still waiting for the rice cake to ’kick in’ I decided to try to use the others to get back to him. With Ruth and Neil having slowed to check a mysterious noise coming from Ruth’s bike newby Jamie did enough on the front so I could recover enough to then kick and escape myself for a solo attempt to catch the git! I couldn’t. the gap stayed at about 50 metres all the way from the bridges to the rbt with us both in tt mode and struggling to keep about 20-21 mph into the wind. Neil was next in with a strong effort to catch us.
On the return Barny and I again lead it out and picked up the pace with the wind now at our heels. Reaching the hump that is spooky we maintained our speed to thin the field and were left with three of us as far as I could see without looking back to share the work to the finish, well I say share but most of the riding on the front was done by the very strong Neil and the ’on a mission’ Barny with only a couple of goes from me. The pace was silly fast with the tail wind and we arrived at the lights together with me opting not to sprint as I hadn’t done enough on the front and this would have been bad form. In a race however I would have used and abused the them without any feeling of guilt or remorse! We were however on full gas all the way back and were as ever surprised and impressed by the arrival of superwoman Ruth next in and only a few seconds behind us!
The ride home was actually steady. Which was nice. The chain was a wake up call though as the racing starts for us in march. NEED TO GET ON IT!
Cheers you amazing cycling people!

Stuart H