Leicester Castle Classic

The not so correctly name Leicester Castle Classic is a bike race through parts of Leicester city centre and passing the Mary de Castro church... it's not so classical in the sense of 2013 was it's first year!

I'm massively into my bikes, so I decided to take a trip down to drool at the pro cyclists' bikes and maybe get 1 or 2 good photos.

f5, 1/800, ISO 800

I had spent the morning worrying that my 200mm wouldn't be long enough to reach the action, but was pleasantly surprised to find the barriers were right at the race line and in fact a lot of places had no barriers at all; this allowed me to not only get right in on the action but also get some shots from other angles, mainly from a lying down position (see below).

f5, 1/1250, ISO 800

And having scoped the place out on my run earlier in the morning, I discovered somewhere I could shoot from above the action too.

f4, 1/250, ISO 2500

And finally, I took my X100 along just to see what I could get; because of how close the barriers were I managed a couple of shots. Anyone who says the X100 is useless for sports just needs to think outside the box.

f8, 1/640, ISO 800

All in all, a very enjoyable experience!