Near the end of the first lap merida launched an attack with 3 Merida riders and a few danglers... Stu started to bridge and I saw him look back and suggest HTFU this is it, he picked it right, Stu My self and Sean Evangelista (GE Plumbing) bridged across and locked into a rolling pace line of 7 and a long day off the front.
Merida claimed the KOM and sprint points for the first 2 laps, Stu stole the KOM on lap 3 and he sadly flatted early on lap 4. the Breakaway never blew out in time and we would often drift between 30secs and 2mins. Riders were slowly dropping and on average one a lap blew up and went back to the peloton leaving just 4 of us for the final 25k's the two merida riders GE plumbing and my self
one of the biggest differences between B grade and A grade is the etiquette in a breakaways, B grade everyone tries to snap everyone all the time but in A grade before the hilly rolly sections they would discuss take it easy, don't drop anyone, if the pace was to fast they would just call 'steady' to keep it together, going into the feed for the final 2 laps they made a point to wait for everyone to get water, they would sit up and wait for everyone to get sorted and the final funny point is if you miss a turn in the rolling pace line you cop an absolute gob full of abuse, all up I might have missed 5 turns when I was trying to get a gu or water or was suffering like a dog and they still would abuse me! Everyone missed turns and everyone copped abuse! even within the Merida team.
We stayed together until the final KOM and 10k's to go when the Merida guys started to attack the shit out of Sean and I one after Chris or Michael would attack and the other would hide on our wheels and wait to get towed to the front again ... I cracked with 5k to go, when Michael (Merida) went up the road and I was on the front trying to pull him back when Sean got out of the saddle and left me behind with absolutely no legs left, He had Chris on his wheel and they played a game of cat and mouse just 10-15 secs up the road, in the end Chris cracked as well and we were doing solo TT efforts into the finish, was sole crushing into the head wind totally exhausted doing 30kph, I looked back only only a few times and saw the peloton on the same straight as me closing down, I ate bar tape and peddled with my arms to get over the finish line totally drained having given it everything .
A huge thanks to Stu for setting up the breakaway and keeping the chasing peloton in order!
1st Merida Michael CUPITT
2nd GE Plumbing Sean EVANGELISTA +30sec
3rd Merida Chris WILLIAMS +45sec
4th Chew +1min
Peloton 1:30
(estimated time gaps)
Unsure about the team result but will update as soon as its posted on Cycling Qld
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