Bringing my A game

First week of holidays down, and a solid week of training involving dirt roads, 70kph winds and torrential rain.

Lets work backwards

Today I raced out at Little River, I was originally intending to go out to Eildon with Jono Lovelock for the 100km road race blackburn, but instead I voted to minimise the commute and head to the 80km race held by footscray cc. Needless to say we got there with only minutes to spare, kit on, roll away. Charles had a race in D grade, and has definately made an improvement over last year. Footscray has a very strong club, they dont have many riders that regularly compete at opens which means they have all these superstrong dudes, that are there every week, which means for awesome racing. I went into the race with the basic training instructions if the race isn't hard make it hard and that I did. Wind were gusting at about 45-60kph constistantly, and the way the 15 or so kilometres per loop worked out meant it had about 12km of strong crosswinds.

The selection were being made straight away, it reminded me alot of when I drove the car in the motorcade at Tour of colleraine on the third stage. The pace was rocketed over one of the small climbs into the crosswind and what resulted was echelons of 5-10 riders 10 metres apart for as far as the eye could see, it was a day I was glad to be driving the car playing Director Sportief. Anyway back to the race, on the first crosswind section people were going everywhere, one of those things where the road is only so wide and fits only so many riders across and the rest are in the gutter on the limit trying to push up into the rolling turns for protection, Jono Thompson was one of these unlucky dudes, who at the end of the day wasnt enough of a barsted to push in. By the time we hit the second section there were bodys flying everywhere, ofcourse I spend the tailwind section having a nap at the back, and when I looked up the Bunch had split and we were 20 metres off fanned across the road. With a bit of a dodgy move through the dirt I made the bridge to the lead group, which then over the space of the next 20km widdled down to about 7 riders. For the first time since breaking my wrists I was starting to feel a bit like my old self, I looked around at these guys and they were all showing the strain of the wind and the pace, but I was fine, cadence was good, HR was less than 130bpm, I was back! Unfortunately I think the others in this bunch realised the relative ease i was riding with and decided to leave me on the front at the end of the head wind section, usually I would sit up but not today, I attacked into the corner leading onto the crosswind section gapped them through the corner, and then drove it up the gutter, this put alot of people on the limit after a couple of kms driving a rolled off, with Chris Fry (RACE/SRT) and "Butch"(De Grandi) rolling through to keep the pressure on. The rest of the riders tried to swing across on to my wheel, now missing turns in a selection is not something I like, so I sat up and let those to guys go, the others guys just looked at me with that "don't you want to win this look", so I sat on for a couple of seconds waited for the duo to get 50 metres up the road and I attacked my group up the gutter, this time only taking one other with me.

We worked pretty well until the last 10km, when some action started to happen, "Butch" from De Grandi was the first to light it up with a big gutter drive, then Graeme Carlson attacked gaining about 20metres, we sort of looked at each other and had a chat deciding to leave him 20metres off the front until the final straight. Once we reached that straight it was a 6km straight crosswinded drag with a bit of a grind to the base of the You Yangs at the end. "Butch" from De grandi was the first to go, he rocketed off, with Chris Fry his Clubmate from Geelong as I soon found out just looking at us to do something, I got on the front and brought it back to a bridgable distance and looked at the others, Carlo then pointed out that this dude was his clubmate and he wasnt going to chase, so I counter attacked myself, looked back to see no reaction/confussion. I quickly closed the gap to the leader and luckily he was in drive mode.

Now drive mode is that zone of focus you get in when you have one goal, its that finish line you can see 4km ahead and you dont notice anything else, its just zoned all into there.

Luckily for me it wasn't till about 1km to go when he realised I was just sitting on enjoying a good draft, although i was thinking tactically, this guy was big and ripped!! I was trying to recover as much as I could because he looked like he could sprint, so with 1km to go he realised I was there and tried to get me to roll through, Now I'd been on the raw end of this deal before, I'd been on the front in a two man break with dan braunsteins about 10 months ago, so I was ready to religate my draft spot and I new he'd be thinking 1st or 2nd is better than a possible fourth, at the base of the hill he looked at me and I went, he responsed and then sat up as I blasted away.

Last time I raced this course I hunger flated on the last lap in a break and survived to get 2nd by about a metre, so it was good to return with a win. And on a good note the first person to come up and congratulate me at the end was Ben O'Leary, great sign of sportsmanship, Ben and I have abit of a Friendly Rivalry, last year it was always him and I at the pointy end, and that sort of competiveness drives you to train a little harder. So thanks to him for the congratulations.

Anyway My batteries almost flat and I'm almost at ballarat on the train. 4 hours with threshold climbs tomorrow, after a late night watching the tour, might hide on a bunch ride first.

More Soon

DT

check out the race report for today 4/7
http://tinyurl.com/l44sra