I awoke this morning feeling shabby (apologies to Shabby) and idled along to Glenvale. Warm weather this morning seems to have encouraged extra numbers to appear in C grade. 9am we roll out and right off the bat two riders decide to leave the “safety” of the bunch. The’s no reaction from the rest of the field initially but soon enough a chase commences. After a few laps(?) the field is back together. There seems to be a bunch of riders communicating to each other and working together and when they go, the rest of the field simply doesn’t want to work to chase them.

Another break goes away and this one does some real damage, I think, leaving some riders behind. Some riders manage to bridge the gap, moving up in dribs and drabs, but most of the field are struggling to chase them down. Your’s truly drives the bunch and then looks over for support.. to find.. a bunch totally unwilling to work! Bastards! I resume the chase and eventually it all comes back together with some other riders joining in to chase (thank deity!).

At some point mid-race a guy gets nice and wobbly coming out of the corner and I lock up a nice new ProRace.. doh! (Sorry to the dudes behind me ;-))

Basically the bulk of the race involved me spending too much time in the wind, chasing breaks or repositioning myself – no mistaking it was a hard race!

With one lap to go, people are smashing pedals into the ground in a desperate attempt to maintain their speed through the corners and I’m just waiting for someone to go down near me/onto me/in front of me. I’m too far back and decide to surge up near the front to find a leadout wheel. At the same time as I surge, the peloton gets cagey and riders slow down, waiting for some sucker to go first and provide a wheel to lock onto. Oh crap! Guess which sucker just passed the field? Yeah, muggins here..

It’s too late to mess around, slow down and grab someone’s wheel and I’ve been telling myself all race that I would sprint to the line no matter how far back in the field I was. So, I go for it, sucking in huge gasps of air, clicking up a gear every time my cadence gets high enough to allow it. I see people move up next to me but fade back again. It’s perhaps 200m from the final corner to the finish line..

More people move close but can’t pass. I’m within 10m of the line and I’m not going to slow down! A split second later I spot another movement to my right and BAM! a bunch of four riders sweeps past me to take the first four places, relegating my sorry arse to the non-paying zone again!! Noooo!!! I spoke to the winner and he said the average speed was ~42.5, which is up around B grade averages I think. It definately felt harder!

Debriefing: Even though I missed that elusive win, I was still relatively happy with the race. I did a lot of unnecessary work and didn’t have anyone for a leadout and I still managed a good finish after a hard race. In my mind, that’s okay, I just have to try again for the win. Did some B-graders sneak into C-grade or something?

Stats: To Follow