Well the road season has finally kicked off, THANK GOD!! LOL
For those of us that ventured up to Camp Sumatanga yesterday we had a very nasty, damp, cold day to kick off the 2012 season. Myself, Mick, and John lined up for the “B” race, Holly & Lynne gave strong vocal support with Lynne handling the camera duties and snapping some great shots. The “B” race was 4 laps of the near 10 mile loop and was John’s first road event ever. With the way the weather was none of us really took the time to do a good warm up thinking we could get it in on the first lap, for two of us it did, but Mick just couldn’t get loosened up and suffered and eventually had to fall back. As for John and I we mixed it up towards the front all race, John showed some great strength and worked a bit too much on the front getting used a bit by the group. The race started with around 30 riders and for the most part stayed together, two riders went off early with one of them coming back on the second lap, we thought we would catch the leader, but not this day, he checked out and stole the day. As we made our way around on the third lap John was picking up on how to take advantage of pulls and to stay off the front, finally the pace picked up and riders started to go off the back. John & I kept to the front working to keep our position strong amongst the large squads. With around 6 miles to go we made the turn for home, things were picking up and my momentum was really carrying me strong. I bolted by John who was on the front and as I went by I yell for him to hold them of as long as he could. I was able to get up a couple 100m on the pack but it was not to be, the peleton came roaring by. I was able to grab like the 7th or 8th wheel, John rolled by and I grabbed his wheel, he motioned for me to come by, but looking over my shoulder I knew no one was going to work any type of pace line so I stayed put and told John “guess your going to learn how it feels to be used and abused”. John rode hard as we came up to the 1k sign and finally other riders came around. As we started to position ourselves for the sprint we were three across and I had the middle. I didn’t know how far John had fallen back but I knew I needed to stay pushing hard. At 200m I heard Russel from the Steel City team tell his guy Kevin who was to my left to go, I grabbed a gear and tried to match what he had, that lasted for maybe 50m, OK I’m stretching it a bit, I kept up what I could, thankfully John was right behind me and still had something left and was able to move through and take 3rd place. I rolled in with like 15th or 16th.
Over all I’m very happy with how the race went. With only three of us that started the race and Mick’s back cramping up early, John and I did well against a couple of the other teams that had better numbers. I think we showed them that ST3 was a player off road and yesterday we showed that they better not take us too lightly on the road.
