Today saw the cycling races back in Crawley town centre again – one of the national Criterium races with a couple of other races as a build-up.

It was the same circuit as for the last two years, but this year the races were on a weekday evening instead of a Sunday. I think it all started a bit later as well, with the first race starting at 6:30pm.

I think they suffered as a result. Certainly the crowds were much smaller than in the past, and there was less of an effort put in by sponsors. In the last two years the council had a stall in the High Street promoting all their cycle to work scheme and other cycle-related initiatives, and some cycling organisation had a collection of strange bikes for kids of all ages to play with, which had a permanent queue of kids.

This time there was a cycling obstacle course in the High Street, arranged by Rok but it was the only thing there and there were not many takers at all. I don’t know if it was because it was a school/work day but the level of support for the event was disappointing.

Also disappointing was the quality of the photos I took. I wanted some nice motion-blur pictures, which I got OK, but all my attempts at panning were dismal failures. There is a distinct delay on my camera which I am not yet used to. When the subject is moving as fast as these cyclists were, having the shot taken a second after you press the button can make a big difference! yet again I found myself wishing I had taken the time to understand all the settings on the camera. I was mostly using the ‘sports’ pre-set, but I’m not sure it it was for the best. I took 37 pictures and deleted 23 as soon as I saw them on the PC. There were a lot which were just empty tarmac where I missed the bikes completely.