June 5th, Mallory Park.

I,m blowing my own trumpet here but would also like to use this bit to bring attention to the venue.  It's not really practical for anyone to travel to regularly from the Stockporty area, but for anyone who works away during the week and finds themselves free for an evevning it is ideal.  Mallory is not far from Hinckly in the East Midlands and is a closed motor/motorbike racing circuit.  It is about 1.4miles around and is not too disimmilar to Oulton Park.  It is relatively fast with a bit of a climb up to the finish, a wide rapid decent and some tight twists and hairpins.  There are two races throughout the week all summer, tuesdays for 3/4/W/J/youth cats and thursdays for E/1/2/3 cats.  They start at 7.20 and are good value at £8.50 on the line.  It's a good buzz and of the tuesday night races I've done there have been between 80 and 120 riders.

On tuesday I got away with 12 laps to go and over the next couple of laps was joined by another dozen or so riders.  There was a lot of shouting and some not so smooth through and off but we did open up a sizeable gap on the rest of the field.  At the bell Richard Birkin of the Ashfield RC jumped away and hung on to a slender advantage, cut to only a few bike lengths in the final sprint.  I managed 8th place over the line.  That gives me three top 10's in my last three races which I am proud of, as a cyclotourist that is.