Today was another good race at the Avanti Classic. First time i have done it and didn't know what to expect. There were a few others there from D3 which was good to see. I was off at 29 minutes and David Melville on the chopping block at 31 minutes (scratch at 33 minutes). It was on from the start with the majority of our group rolling through in a pace line and not mucking around. We managed to pass a few groups on the first lap which was a good sign. 2nd lap was just as fast and we passed several more.
Scratch caught up to us going over the damn wall while we were also passing another group. This made things pretty interesting as there were a lot of people trying to get past each other and not a whole lot of room. David said that a lot of people were too busy looking at all the water in the damn after the recent rainfall, i can honestly say that i was concentrating that much that I didn't even see the water at all.
Once we made it over the damn, i found myself riding in the scratch group and feeling good. This would change pretty quickly though when I saw a crash about 8 or 10 bikes in front and some people hit the deck. We were doing 45km/h. Person after person seemed to just run straight into them and crash, I even saw one bike about 6 foot in the air! I jammed the breaks and slid sideways trying to avoid them and then saw a gap to the left which was perfect. Just as I was about to go through a bike landed in front of me and still sliding and unable to stop, I was in the air. I don't know if I launched off the rear wheel like a ramp of just jumped over the bike but i landed on the other side and kept riding (apologies to the guy whose bike it was, but there was nothing i could do). The delay was only small but a gap had opened and I couldn't get back on.
The pace remained high till the end of the race and it turned out to be pretty good fun and hard on the legs.
The picture is of my tyre after the skid. Don't know how i didn't get a flat.
Average pace for my group over the 80km was 43.6km.hr.
David M rode well and finished in the front group.
See you all during the week.
1 comment:
Yer, it was a good race. I had a feeling things would get messy along the dam wall as three groups of about 30 riders all caught each other at the same time. I was in the first few wheels making sure I didn't miss any splits in the field so fortunately I was not caught up in the crash. When we took the right hand turn into the last 10km there was only 20 guys left in the front group. It would have been good to have Shaun in the front for the final sprint but these things happen in racing.
The final 10km were very hard and fast as Fly V were controlling the race and covering all the moves. I made a few attacks and was trying to encorage a Fly V rider to work in a move of the front but everytime they just convered the break and sat on, choosing not to contribute and keep the race together to benefit Johnaton Cantwell. Fly V took four of the top 5 places in the finish.
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