Hey Guys, haven't updated in a while. Not much racing apart from this weekend which was my first road race. Saturday I took a slow ride of the course just to check it out,and I knew that it was definitely not going to be a long race, but certainly intense!
The race was held in PMB this last weekend, and man o' man, are road races early! Even though we live in PMB we were still up at 5 am to leave and get to the start. although my race was only at around 08:00 we got there in time to see the pro's and Juniors head out on their 100km loop.
After a fairly intense warm up on the indoor trainer ( it was way too cold to try warm up on the tar) I made my way to the start. Dustin Kilpatrick, a good friend and one of the top u16 roadies in the country was present as well as Luke Roberts and Rhyno Beukes.
The start was really slow but as soon as we began to make our way up to the first major climb, Fox Hill, Luke and I came to the front to split up the race. A bunch of four of us rode most of Fox Hill until Dustin put in a hard attack. Rhyno dropped off and this left Luke, Dustin and I. We rode together until we crested Fox, now came a short flat section which had a sharp corner into a short steep climb. I pulled out to the back of the bunch to try launch an attack and see if I could create a gap on the guys. The guys stuck and the racing stayed unchanged. A couple of attacks followed but no one managed to break the gap. Eventually I timed one right and opened a pretty big gap, but after a couple minutes I realized it would be safer to tackle the next main climb in a bunch, so I eased up the pace.
Approaching Polly Shorts it became the calm before the storm, the chatting that had occurred on the previous climb was now gone. We hit the bottom of 'Pollies' pretty slow, but as soon as we hit the first harsh kick Luke jumped up onto his pedals, I stuck on and we managed to open up on Dustin. Luke eased up again for a slight moment but again accelerated near the top opening a gap of around 10sec. I chased hard going over the top and slowly reeled him in, unfortunately the lead car took us through the traffic but on the wrong road, this allowed me to close the gap straight away, this too allowed Dustin to catch us. Eventually we were back en route and were approaching the finish rapidly. With about 1km to go Dustin attacked and I lunged for his wheel. As soon as he began to slowly I gave everything. I opened up a gap of 2 or 3sec but misjudged the distance to the line. With about 150m to go the gap started closing, I slowly began to shut the door to try slow him down. I crossed the line a hair ahead of Luke, with Dustin bringing home 3rd. Unfortunately commisaires decided to penalise me one position as they saw the sprint as being dangerous.
I was thrilled to have finished where I did at my first race and a major thanks needs to go out to the people who made a huge effort to help me out, to Grant Dinkel (Adrenaline Cycles) who stayed open after hours to help with my set up and gearing on numerous occasions, Luke Dinkel who lent me a 52 chainring, and to Ollie and Clint Olsen who helped out with my restricted gearing, Thanks Guys!!!!
Now its an easy week before Eston, which should be a really exciting one.
keep it rubber side down
B
photos to follow
No comments:
Post a Comment