That's Bike Racing!

Got back last night from a solid weekend of racing right up the top of the South Island so thought I would write a wee report! 

The usually pleasantly warm and sunny region of Marlborough hosted two races over Saturday and Sunday, kicking off with the Forrest Estate Graperide on Saturday morning. 

The Forrest Estate Graperide

The Benchmark Homes cycling team were fired up from the get go to make sure we were aggressive and represented in every dangerous move. As always the race started at a rapid pace and a move stuck straight away. As planned we were represented in this move with Anthony Chapman. The first 40km of the race is relatively flat with nothing of note to cause serious damage to the race so the main group stayed intact before the hill out of Picton. The pace increased when we hit the hill with a few of us keen to get rid of some people to create a more 'select' group of riders for the run back down in to the finish. We were successful in doing this and the group was almost halved by the top of the hill. The road through Linkwater and Havelock with it's rolling terrain and out-if-sight out-of-mind feel was where we expected the winning move to form. And as expected, it did...A group got away with most teams represented, in which we had Anthony Chapman and Hamish Schruers. Then disaster struck! Down a slippery descent two of the riders in the break away crashed including our own Hamish Schruers. This put and end to the move almost straight away which was unfortunate as we would have had a very good chance of winning from that move. 

Luckily we still had Anthony Chapman and me at the pointy end of the race. I followed a wee dig from Sam Horgan just out of Havelock and we managed to get a gap. We were soon joined by Rob Reid, Nick Lovegrove and Tayla Harrison. I wasn't really happy with the composition of the group ,which included 3 Subway Team riders, so didn't do any work in the hope that we would be caught by the chasing group and I would have some support coming into the finish from Anthony Chapman. This never happened however so Rob Reid and I were forced to follow the inevitable attacks from the Subway riders in the last 10km. We did well not to let any of them get away solo and Rob entered the narrow and twisty finishing chute first with Nick, Sam, myself then Tayla on his wheel. You need to be in the top 2 or 3 positions heading into this chute to have a chance at winning so I was already on the back foot by being in 4th position which wasn't ideal. Into the last bend about 50m before the finish I saw a small gap between the grass and Sam Horgan which I decided to take...turns out the gap was not really there and I should have tried to undercut him 50m earlier. I ended up hitting some gravel and hitting the deck nice and hard. Very disappointing, especially so close to the finish. However I managed to get up and roll over the line 5th albeit in an uncomfortable state. Luckily I just lost skin and didn't break anything. I wasn't wearing gloves and ripped a nice patch of skin off my palm...learnt my lesson the hard way I guess. 

So the day went far from how we planned it but the encouraging thing was that we rode very well as a team and put the right people in the right moves all day. We just didn't have luck on our side! Congratulations to Nick Lovegrove on the win. I enjoy racing with him, always a good honest rider....with obscene amounts of go-go juice!

Benchmark Homes Elite Cycling Series #1

After the debacle of the day before the team was steaming at the ears and fired up to rip into some hard racing! The plan was simple. Have at least two riders in each move and deliver Dan Barry to the line with his wheel in front of everyone else's. (Dan was drafted back into the team for the first round of the series. It is awesome to be racing with him again!) 

As soon as the race started the usual burners off the front came and were quickly shut down by an antsy peloton. However about 5km into the race a large group of about 18 riders managed to sneak off the front and quickly build a solid advantage over the rest of the field. Every team was represented in the move so there was no organised chase from behind which meant the break went out to a 2min lead before we knew it. We were lucky enough to get three riders in this move with Dan, Hamish and Anthony. The group built a huge advantage of about 6mins in the first 30km of the race as we were dawdling along with no urgency at all. So from my point of view the race was over as there was nothing I could do to help the boys up front apart from covering moves to make sure nothing got across without me in it. While doing this a few of us ended up riding off the front of the group and essentially just had a good 'training session' out in the wind. Bridging a 6 minute gap in those conditions would have been somewhat futile and unnecessary as we had 3 riders in the move. As I rolled across the finish line I was ecstatic when I was told Dan got the WIN! In style as well, a solo break away for the last 20km to take it by 15 seconds. Love it when a plan comes together!!!

Dan celebrating his win! ©Bruce Wilson

So all was not lost from the weekend and the team was happy again after the performance on Sunday. 

Next up is Le Race this Saturday. It is the annual 'mountain classic' down here in the South Island and never fails to deliver some very testing racing. Hopefully I can recover as best as possible from my wee tumble before then and be 100%!

Thank you to everyone for the support this weekend, especially Benchmark Homes, Brendan and Jodi Hart, Vic Chapman for dressing my wounds and Mum for giving me lots of nice food for the weekend. Oh and Sam Horgan for closing the gap on me which lead me to crash... :) 

Cheers!

W