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.