Winter Series Starts

Ok, so its nearly the end of the week and I'm only just writing this now - some of us are slow developers.

The Winter Series started last Saturday which for a change was nice and sunny.  The course was Coastals, Dominion, Cemetery Corner, Moutere, Waimea West and finished in Ranzau road.  

The A grade was actually pretty big - in fact the turn out for the event was quite impressive.  All the big boys were out to play including Robin Reid, Paul Odlin and Chris Nicholson along with David Ayre who is up for a couple of weeks.  Things started calmly enough although David went out for an early attack which stretched out the rest of the group.  I was feeling ok and just tried to keep near the front of the bunch.  It wasn't until the start of Dominion that things started to heat up.   Chris increased the pace and at the top of the climb there was only myself and Tom Hodgson.  Chris didn't let up and we soon had a small break.  Soon we were joined by David and fellow Nelson Alarms teammate Chris Charles.  Coming out of Cemetry Corner it looked like we had been caught (that corner can really slow a group up) however Chris N continued on and we were joined by Dean Fulton.  I was struggling to keep up on the flat and just didn't seem to be recovering so Tom and I dropped off just before the Moutere.  Between the township and the start of the hill we were caught by the chasing group led by Paul.  The group broke up on the climb.  Somehow I managed to stay with the leaders and ended up with Paul, Robin, Ollie and Tom H and Tom Nicholson.  Back on the flat I found myself in trouble again.  Paul and Robin were doing some hard pulls with Robin bringing the pace up to around 45kph.  Ollie gapped us off just as I had finished my pull and so I didn't have enough energy to get back on.  We were soon joined by the rest of the chasing group who had been dropped on the Moutere hill.  The rest of the race was just like normal.  I tried to get away early into the Ranzau road corner but didn't have enough gas to maintain the gap so it all finished in a sprint.

So a bit of a unsatisfactory result.  Certainly I don't have too many problems going uphill but at the moment on the flat I'm finding it difficult to keep the pace up.  On the brighter side Chris C managed to finish 4th and so the Nelson Alarms team is well represented in the placings.  I'll try and help him maintain his position on the challenging Heslington circuit this weekend.

Mystery & Intrigue

The Brian Harford Mini Tour is one of the 7th Wonders of the Cycling Nelson Club world (one of the other wonders is unsolved mystery about why the CN 40km Club Champs is a scratch race yet the CN 80km Club Champs is a handicap?).  This year as usual the end result was not entirely what anybody expected.

The race is run in 3 stages.  The first stage is a short scratch start race from the club rooms to Seaton Valley - the stage may appear to be a simple scratch race but in fact there is a sealed handicap which is applied to the results at the end of the race.  This almost always ensures some form of controversy.

So how did it go?

Knowing that Chris Nicholson was sure to apply some pressure at some point on the first stage I thought it would be a good idea to get near the front as we came into the hills.   There is a subtle difference between being at the front and being off the front which I haven't yet fully grasped - thankfully I was joined by Cameron Karwoski from Blenheim and together we built up a reasonable lead.  Turning into Seaton we were joined by Chris N who seemed to appear out of thin air.  So it all came down to a sprint - well at least I got third!

The second stage was a timetrial from the Mapua school to the top of Harleys road.  I managed to catch the guy in front of me just before the start of the Ruby Bay hill.  Chris N caught me just past the begininng of the climb up Harleys.  I pretty much matched him all the way and ended up finishing the stage in 2nd place.

The final stage was a handicap race back from the bottom of Harleys, over the Moutere Hill and finishing in Redwood Valley road.  We had a small group of 5 consisting of myself, Chris N, Henry Kersten, Gary Overend and Cameron.  Henry was in trouble from the beginning and so the chasing was down to Cameron, Chris and me.  We stayed together coming over the hill and reached 75kph chasing down the other side, picking up groups along the way.  As predicted it came down to a sprint with only one group ahead of us (by about 30m).  

So why the mystery?  Well given the good performance we expected Chris N to win the whole thing (something which I think he expected as well) however in the end the winner was declared to be fellow Nelson Alarms team mate - Chris Charles!  Chris was as suprised as the rest of us as his best placing had been 4th or 5th on the fisrt stage and the time trial.  Further investigation showed that  Chris C had benefited from a sealed handicap of 30sec, which along with his good TT and a reasonable placing in the final stage had put him in the lead.

This wouldn't be the first time that Chris C has managed to achieve something like this and I doubt that it will be the last.

Kickstart

Ok so its been a while but you have to forgive me.  Firstly I started this project and then was immediately laid off work.  Now that things are back to normal I'm going to try and keep things a little more up to date.

The website is actually in the process of getting sorted out, I've started a new training program which is proving pretty hard to do so hopefully I'll end up with some reasonable form a some good results.

Apart from the TDV which was a bit of a balls up (team racing at it's worse) I've had some reasonable success with the 200km Grape Ride and some other local races.  The winter series is about to start so it will be all action from now on.