Race Report – Seaton Town Centre Criterium

Mid Devon Race Team Youth Rider Louie Priddle takes second place on a technical town centre criterium in Seaton

Today I traveled up to Seaton for the Cyclefest. When we arrived the weather was pretty shocking, very wet and cold. I went for a recce of the course with CS Dynamo rider Corey Bale, specifically to have a look at Castle Hill which we would have to race up, I was especially looking forward to the hill as I have been doing a fair amount of climbing recently in training. All signed on and pinned up I started my warm up – Shout out to the West family for letting me under your gazebo to stay dry! 20 min warm up complete I headed over to the line, we were allowed 1 lap to test the course before the race properly started. Tester lap complete we lined up and set off.

For the First 5 mins of the race It was fairly settled with not much going on, at around 10 mins I was on the front going up Castle hill and found myself riding off the front with Will Tidball on my wheel and another rider from BCDS on his when I heard Will shout we have a gap – I knew now I wasn’t going to let this chance slip so we pressed on for a good 15 mins going very hard on every section of the course. At about 20 mins we dropped the rider from BCDS and it was just me and Will. With 3 laps to go Will attacked me just before the hair pin bend when I was caught napping after a hard turn on the front. For the rest of the race he had a gap of between 10-20 seconds and I tried my hardest to try and catch him, bringing it back slowly on some parts of the course (mainly the hill) and then him making the gap larger on the technical parts. 1 Lap to go I knew I had no chance of catching him so I took it steady through each of the technical sections making sure not to over cook any of the corners and come off. I Came away with 2nd which I was pleased with.