Well another ride around the lake. This makes it 5 for me... was the best one so far too. The day dawned wet and cool but the rain eased, the road dried up and in the end turned out to be a perfect day for riding.
I started in the 1c group, the 3rd one to start and hit the turbo boost right from the first hill! The legs were not feeling that great this year so did not stay away, but tried again and got away just as we were passing the group 1b. I kept on going but was not able to get away from 1b. Sat in for a while and then spent the next 20km lapping it out in an attempt to catch the 1a group.
We caught 1a group at about 50k. Things then slowed down for a while... a couple went of the front. After a while I decided to go with them, then a couple more went off the front after me on a climb... Including Blair Taylor. The three of us lapped it out to catch the front two. We stayed away for about 40Km but things went bad from just after Turangi, nothing left in the tank. We did not work that well together and there was a bit of hammering going on... oh well.
Once we got caught I stayed on the front or close to it to stay out of all the bad bunch riding... but once we got to Hatepe I went backwards fast! Thank fully there were lots of people in the bunch! I just held on and was able to claw my way back up to the front.
Then things got pretty fast and furious and I was just holding on... up over Airport hill I went to the front, then down into Taupo. Got swamped by the bunch and made the decision to go to the back... took a while and there were a few scary moments when I thought things might go bad.
Sure enough a crash happened just as we were coming onto the waterfront - bikes flying in all directions. I avoided it but ended up caught behind the crash and by the time I got around it the bunch was quite a ways up the road. Nothing for it but to TT to the finish... 4hrs 8mins 55secs for a new record and 7th fasted time! Yeah!
No comments:
Post a Comment