The eternal quest to lose 5kg…
This weekend I headed off for a time trial out near Wangaratta and made a weekend of it. The ITT was on the Friday morning. In the afternoon, I went into Wangaratta and watched the National Road Series male and female riders fly around town. Continue reading
So, despite what I wrote about boycotting CX, I do race it now and then. My club held a cyclocross race this weekend and I went along to support them. The plan was ride around and finish. That was that.
My tyre pressure was set to 60psi for a mix of mud, concrete, loose stone, gravel and grass.
Around and around I went. Riding on the grass, it felt like I was being dragged backwards. Climbing hills was a hard slog. Riding through th Continue reading
The plan was to have some fun if possible. Get gapped, TT back and repeat. I was not thinking of contesting the sprint. I was also riding my “backup” Ridley Noah, so instead of Zipps, I was using some heavy mid range Shimano alloys.
Numbers were down so the race wound up being A grade (I think there were none), B grade and C grade combined. Ok, the official results have the junors in C grade and the rest of us in B. Continue reading
This year over 100 riders signed up for their own races of truth. That’s about a 20% increase on last year. Most of us stand little to any chance of getting anywhere near the podium. As we love to these races, we show up anyway and have a go. Pleasingly, five riders from my club were here to race.
Great to see that the popularity of time trialing is rising, especially at masters level. Even nicer to see given the powers that be scheduled the State Time Trial Championships up against the National Cyclocross Championships. That’s why I’ve boycotted CX since 2013 as they did a similar thing then as “I does not affect many people”. Looking at the state body’s twitter feed (which blocks me for reasons unknown), little mention of the TT champs. Lots of nationals info (that should be left to the national twitter feed, not the state one IMO). It was left to clubs and riders to promote today’s TT. We did a good job. Anyhow, onto the fun stuff. Continue reading
I’d not planned on racing today. I was tired. My thighs and left shoulder were sore. A coffee sorted me out. Today I was going to see how my legs felt and then, if I felt ok, do some pace setting and jump everyone on the second last corner.
For once, I never got right to the back of the bunch today. A decent sized field probably helped there. I spent a good portion on the front – much more than a 20th of the race. I chased some breaks, let some go and then let the rest catch them. Another Drouin Cycles rider, Brett Kennedy was racing so I figured if he took off, I’d let him go. Continue reading