Things were not looking promising as we rolled out to Murrarie. The heavens opened and there was some serious discussion about whether we would bother racing. At the last minute though the rain stopped and we signed up. There was a field of about 35 in C-grade made up of the usual crowd (middle-aged fat dudes and some kids). Terence and I were flying the flag for D3.
The plan was to take it steady and just roll around. Bonner however has an expensive new bike and was keen to be able to tell his wife when she gets from Ireland this week that he has paid off 1/2000th of it, so he got mixed up in the intermediate sprint and just got pipped for the win.
I was cruising around at the back of the pack getting nicely spray-painted with grit out of the puddles on the track. I had a brand new fancy set of wheels and was feeling pretty cool until I realised that the guy riding beside me was about 11 years old. (It is hard to feel too hardcore when you are competing against guys whose voices haven't broken.) In any case I felt sufficiently embarrassed to get off my butt and do something. I rolled up to sit about 3 back and then with a bit over 2 laps to go hit the front and put a bit of a split in the pack leaving 5 of us up front. Terence (inspired by seeing Cancellara at Paris-Roubaix) took off solo and rode the last 1 1/2 laps on his lonesome. He didn't look back once which was probably for the best as he would have seen the pack mowing him down only 20 meters from the line.
It was a cruel way to lose but a bit of a moral victory. (As it turned out, I went to Uni with the guy who won. He used to be in the SAS and once rowed across the Atlantic ocean unsupported in 50 days. He is a maniac.)
Bring on the BOTB and some better weather.
1 comment:
Good stuff mate. Keep Plugging away, we all started from the rif raf of c grade. Look forward to hearing about results soon.
You and Terrence should put pressure on Ashley to start racing with you again
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