Michaelhouse Classic

Hey guys

This weekend was the Michaelhouse Classic, held at the school and it made for the perfect venue. Having been in base training for the past month I was really unsure as to how my legs would be feeling as I only got the go ahead to give it a bash on Thurday, so I was not really geared to race, but it was actually awesome to get the bit between my teeth again.

I did my best to warm up my legs in the miserable conditions, and before I knew it, it was crunch time. On the start there were a couple of hard hitters like Andrew Hill & Craig Paul. As we left the school I put in a series of attacks to try and split up the field as much as possible. A group of 4 went off the front, including Craig, Andrew, Ian and myself.

About 7km in I came to the front at the entrance to one of the single tracks to try and thin the group out a bit more. I managed to get a small gap along with Andrew Hill, but then disaster struck. A stick had flung up into my derailleur and had shifted my chain into the hardest gear. I tried to pedal but the crank would not roll through. I stopped and worked the stick out as gently as possible and then had to try and bring the chain back up into the right gear. After losing a lot of time I jumped back on and found myself in 4th, as Craig and Ian had shot passed and were chasing down Andrew. I pushed super hard and eventually caught up to Craig who was sitting in third.

My legs at this stage were screaming due to the lack of power and the shock of pushing so hard shock to the system but I kept pushing as hard as possible and finally caught Ian at around the halfway mark. We worked together in order to try reel back Andrew but my legs started to pay the toll from the big effort I had put in earlier. I pushed through and tried to shake Ian at the crest of a few climbs but couldn't hold the gap.

With 10km to go I let Ian go, and tried to restore a little power in an attempt to maybe chase down near the end. 6km's to go and I was 1min 40sec down on Ian and decided I had to close that gap, I sacrificed myself and rode myself into the ground, but only managed to close the gap down to a minute by the finish.

I was SUPER stocked with the result as I've done absolutely no power training for the last month or so, so it was quite a shock to find myself 3rd overall. Well done to Kim Phillips on a very difficult but fantastic course!