With this being my second race, I was expecting performance to improve somewhat on last week. So with dragging our beloved captain, Patrick Smith, out I at least was going into a race with a teammate. We rolled out from Newbridge Greyhound Stadium at 12:32 for a few kilometres of neutralised riding, with people causally chatting and jostling for position on somewhat narrow roads. The peloton starting out was quite large, hearing off some people the A3 field was something like 150 people!
The peloton felt a little nervous for this neutralised section, probably because a lot of us are still finding our legs. One of the key things from rolling out is to get into a good position early, I got stuck behind a few riders who were having difficulty clipping in, so was stuck further down the back. Just as the pace car started to pull away, the race was on. The first climb was steeper than it looked on the internet, so I decided to take advantage of this to close in on my teammate (was getting lonely at the back).
It also turned out that this was the first major attack of the day where a breakaway formed on this climb and stayed away for much of the race. For the remainder of the first lap, I managed to stay in the pack.
On our third pass of the climb, the legs were feeling like lead, and I was boxed in, so lost contact with the peloton on the climb. So I spent the remainder of the drag after the climb going at full gas to grab back on. Eventually, after a small bit of descending, I was back in the game!
A number of attacks were launched from the bunch in an effort to reel in the break, but it didn't seem like anyone was interested in bridging, or people were aware that it would be unlikely that the break would be caught. About halfway into the fourth lap, word came down through that the break was 90 seconds down the road. With only 10km to go, the peloton which was whittled down to about 60 riders became resigned to its fate, and stopped chasing.
Before the start of the race, Paddy and I agreed that he’d try to set me up for the sprint if the legs could take it, but at about 3km to go, the legs could've moved up and tried to contest, but at this point they were already on fire. There wasn't enough in the tank to put up much of a fight. So we just decided to sit in and roll in with the bunch that wasn't contesting.
After getting back to the car and spinning my rear wheel, I discovered the rear brake was rubbing quite badly. It wasn't doing that the night before! I can't believe I was racing with brake rub, no wonder I was having so much difficulty, suppose you live and learn. Eventually, will manage to put on a show soon enough, I’m starting to run out of stupid mistakes.
On our third pass of the climb, the legs were feeling like lead, and I was boxed in, so lost contact with the peloton on the climb. So I spent the remainder of the drag after the climb going at full gas to grab back on. Eventually, after a small bit of descending, I was back in the game!
A number of attacks were launched from the bunch in an effort to reel in the break, but it didn't seem like anyone was interested in bridging, or people were aware that it would be unlikely that the break would be caught. About halfway into the fourth lap, word came down through that the break was 90 seconds down the road. With only 10km to go, the peloton which was whittled down to about 60 riders became resigned to its fate, and stopped chasing.
Before the start of the race, Paddy and I agreed that he’d try to set me up for the sprint if the legs could take it, but at about 3km to go, the legs could've moved up and tried to contest, but at this point they were already on fire. There wasn't enough in the tank to put up much of a fight. So we just decided to sit in and roll in with the bunch that wasn't contesting.
After getting back to the car and spinning my rear wheel, I discovered the rear brake was rubbing quite badly. It wasn't doing that the night before! I can't believe I was racing with brake rub, no wonder I was having so much difficulty, suppose you live and learn. Eventually, will manage to put on a show soon enough, I’m starting to run out of stupid mistakes.