Pre declared as race against mates, Dan, Adam and I were racing each other from the outset (in fun ofcourse!), Dan and Adam roasted me on the first lap, as did Alan. I tried to keep up and even pushed hard enough up the first hills to get shortness of breath and a bit of a heart murmor! It was futile though, they we gone, so I settled into my own rythm and had a heap of fun.
Before long I somehow caught Dan, and pushed on, on the next lap, it started to rain, hard... I'd never ridden a race in the rain and it really spurred me on to push harder. A couple of laps later I caught Alan who was suffering from musical disc pads that were full of mud, we rode together for about half a lap and chatted which was nice. I was full of beans and Alan's brakes were giving him major grief (he ended up DNF'ing), so I pushed on, wondering if I catch up to Adam, when on a steep climb I stood up and put everything I had into the cranks to get up a hill, when *ping*, the chain snapped into two, it was full of mud and the removeable link had thrown a pin. The repair stop cost me 4:50, and I was pretty angry :|
I pushed on after that (being mindful of my chain, I didn't want to break it again) and although I had lost a bit of puff by the last lap, I ended up finishing 23rd out of 66 (34%), one place and 90 seconds behind Adam (which is an honour to say the least, the guy is a freak!) and I smashed my placing from last year, a huge improvement.
Am totally lifted by the result! A wicked race, loads of fun on one of the best courses around and the race against mates was awesome motivation.
The crew:
| Jason | Giant Trance |
| Adam | Scott Scale HT |
| Alan | Giant Anthem |
| Dan | Turner |
| Mark | Avanti HT |
The Stats:
| Distance | 51.8km |
| Time | 3:27 |
| Climb | 1035vm |
| Speed | 16.1km/h avg, 41.9km/h max |
| Power | 214Wavg |
| Date | 29/04/07 |