I walked down to Southend seafront about half an hour before the main race started. Javid, Joel, Shane and Barry from our Leigh on Sea, Southend and Basildon shops had already been there for most of the day offering free bike safety checks and handing out freebies. Sharing our stand were Wilier whose bikes always draw a lot of attention not least, on this occasion, because they were being ridden by the Sports Beans Wilier team in the Tour Series.

As I arrived the crew from ITV4 were on the beach filming their introductory segments and doing interviews. The racers, meanwhile, were doing warm up laps and timing themselves around the corners to see how hard they could hit them (I overheard 2 riders from the BMC team who reckoned they were doing the tight turn at the bottom of the course at 26km/h).

As the crowd started to build up it was clear that local cycling clubs Southend Wheelers, Maldon CC and Essex Road were out in force as were a lot of the local cycling trade including the guys from Grips in Rayleigh.

Endura, who are one of the main sponsors of the series and had their own team in the race, had very kindly sorted us out with some VIP tickets. So after some light refreshment in the hospitality area we got down to watching the race.

The action was fast and furious from the off, with multiple breakaways and different groups or individuals off the front on virtually every lap. With music blasting and the commentators encouraging the crowd to bang on the advertising boards there was a massive amount of noise every time the riders went past and this increased on the sprint laps where points were up for grabs for the individual riders. The lead changed hands so many times during the race that it was sometimes a little difficult to work out how it would effect the overall standings. In the end the race, and the whole series, was decided on the last sprint of the last lap by a winning margin of a few millimetres.

It had been a great evening of racing and the crowd really seemed to have enjoyed themselves. Hopefully the series will be back in Southend next year for another great evening of cycling.