From my last report ‘Winter of contentment’ I had 2 more road races to complete. The first being the Northern Combine road racing champs, then the jewel - the Melbourne to Warrnambool. All my training & racing for the winter was done with the Warnie in mind. All the road races I competed in were about honing my body & fitness to give it a solid crack towards this race. The Northern Combine champs was a race I wanted to do well in. I went against my M2W training plan and snuck in a bit of a ‘taper’ for the race which consisted of a very light, easy 90km’s on the Saturday, the day before the race, rather than the 7hrs I had pencilled in. I raced Masters 1/2/3 out on the Strath Creek course which makes up a large majority of the Preston Mountain Classic race (minus the big hill at the end). The race went OK, I finished 5th after being in an early break of 6 that got away up the first major climb then ‘mysteriously’ wanted to soft pedal about half way through the race. The remainders of the bunch caught us so it was back to a big pack, 2.5km’s out there’s a small climb before a downhill section then a flat finish, so – you guessed it, I attacked on the last climb to avoid the big legged brigade in a bunch sprint and despite gapping the field quickly I timed it wrong and popped about 50m from the top of the hill and struggled to recover in the last 1.5km downhill/flat bit & was passed by some more organised riders – Bugger, 50m from being a hero or a zero.......Shit happens !!
Onto The Warnie, I had trained the house down for this race, I was feeling great after punching out some BIG weeks of training. I trained all days except Friday which was my day off. Mon to Thurs were a mix of high intensity rides & recovery 90 to 100km rides dependant upon my training cycle, Sat & Sun was reserved for my long rides & racing.
My thoughts for the race was to first stay upright – be vigilant and avoid crashes & secondly work into a bunch of like graded riders, work with them and take & enjoy the day as it comes. The first part came true as at the 13km mark a massive crash happened about 15m in front of me. It had brought down a lot of the NRS (National Race Series) riders so it was probably the 50th to 75th positioned riders in the pack. Before the crash I was waiting for what a lot of people had told me – ‘prepare to be on the rivet from the start (Werribee Racecourse)’. This didn’t happen, from my position in the peleton which was generally around 100th to 150th, it was very stop / start. One minute you were on the brakes with speed down to 20km/h then the next second you are out of the saddle sprinting ! As mentioned at the 13km mark a big crash happened which brought about 25 riders down, luckily I had sufficient time to slow down and managed to get through the carnage after a few quick swerves & a bunny hop. The front of the race had moved on (read: attacked) and I found myself in the 2nd or ‘chase’ pack which consisted of 20 riders, over half of which were NRS riders. There were riders from Genesys, Drapac, Budget Forklifts, Search2Retain whilst the rest of us were simply ‘graded’ riders. The NRS guys hammered it trying to catch the front pack (approximately 60 riders) & from where I was sitting, generally around 15th wheel, everything was pretty comfortable. The fellas up the front were all rolling real hard, the graded guys sat back as we all new getting involved up the front would have been massive HR stuff & an the inevitable ‘pop’ would have ensued.
This is the only image I have of the group I was in, as you can see some big name NRS teams
The only time things got real hard was when we switched from a Westerly (headwind) to a Southerly (crosswind) direction on the roads that zigzag around the You Yangs, near Geelong. The crosswinds brought out higher speeds in the front dozen guys, while the rest of us had to be strong & make sure we positioned well in the ‘echelon’, riding in the gutter, or with no protection from the side wind, would have tipped you into the red. I did well with this but a few of the fellow graded riders weren’t as good or as strong at getting a good position & you could see they were struggling. At about the 50km mark we hit the first KoM hill which I was dreading as I thought the NRS guys would smash it up, but amazingly it was quite easy. We got to the top and not long after we swung South again, crosswind time ! Again I positioned myself well, but this time things didn’t quite work. My rear wheel an Easton EC90SL which has been absolutely bullet proof for 3 seasons gave up the ghost. I’ll leave it at that as there are things that happen in a race that should stay in the race (footy analogy – what happens on the field stays on the field). So 57km into my first Melbourne to Warrnambool, I was sitting at the turn onto the Midland Highway with a banged up rear wheel with broken spokes. I sat there and watched the race go by. My pack was catching the lead pack, at the time we were only about 200m off them & they managed to catch them 8km’s later.
Luckily for me a local cow cockie saw me on the side of the road and offered me a lift into Inverleigh to my ‘team car’ where Grechy was waiting for me with my first feedbag. We jumped in following the race all the way to Warnambool before a few beers. My 2012 race season ended up with my BIG race in tatters, an event that I had trained specifically for the last 16 weeks for, which at the time I thought amounted to nothing. But after a great yack with Grechy on the way to Warnambool it all amounted to ‘Shit happens’. And sometimes it does ! Next year ................
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