Meudon in the money at Giles Ree

Race review from WarrenJ ...

4 Meudoner’s competed in Sundays 80 mile Giles Ree Memorial RR, the prizes were slightly more generous than normal due to the fact it was a 25th anniversary RR. Myself, Jamie Newall and married couple David Creeggan and Jo Munden competed. Jo was a lone women entry and was very brave to line up for such a race which included most the SE big hitters, her reasoning was she was going to watch anyway but figured she may as well race and see how far she got! The organisers ensured a £20 prize for 1st woman, so now Jo felt obliged to try and finish which would have been no mean feat.

The course was fairly sporting with a couple of drags per lap and in any normal race would be a recipe for the race to break apart. For some reason this race stayed pretty much together the whole time except for a few small breaks but none got much more than 1 minute.

So after nearly 80 miles of fairly brisk racing it was apparent a bunch sprint would occur. The bunch had probably lost around 20 or so riders through punctures or general fatigue so there were a good 60 of us going balls out down the final hill ready for the slight uphill sprint into Staplefield. Hectic was an understatement and I for one was thinking of my first fathers day and thinking it may be more sensible to sit this one out, but adrenaline took over and I saw a gap with 300m to go and went for it, 8 other riders got round me on the line including Jamie in 7th and David in 8th so between us we took home approx £90 in prizes including the £20 Jo picked up.