Beards, al Qaeda, synchronised sprinting - the h'cap

Doing the handicap for a change I arrived early to find one other car and the police. Expecting some objection to the race we were surprised to be asked why we were parked below tree cover directly under the Heathrow flight path. These were the anti-terrorist squad and they were (really) checking we had bikes in the back and not surface to air missiles. 

Lining up with Ken Prince,  Mark Bremner and Bob Moore we set off 38 minutes behind the 3rd cats and 50 behind the 4ths which would explain why we didn't catch any of them until one and a half laps to go, despite being driven on by Darrell Pembroke and Andy Betts. With no lead car in sight Mark reckoned there were still at least ten away. This led to what seemed a less serious than normal sprint led out by Mark and the Twickenham Beardy bloke. Ken and Bob were smartly through and I (forewarned by Keith that he uses the beard to repel all adversaries) hesitated before squeezing through to make sure we finished all 4 Meudons in a row. Then we found out there were only four away, so we were a neat and tidy 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th. Which was nice.