Friday, July 11, 2008

Winter Series Race 3 - An Arctic Adventure!

Race 3 of the winter series left Richmond, climbed dominion and then completed 3 laps of the Woollastons circuit.  There was quite a large field in A grade (it's been quite a large group for each race).  Chris N wasn't there and as it was a double points day it was inevitable that we would end up with a new race leader.

As expected the race broke up on the climb up Dominion.  I made it into the break along with Paul Odlin, Robin Reid, Dean Fulton, Brent Harris, Chris Charles, Murray Sheridan and George Bennett so we had a pretty good group.  Things went smoothly at first and then Robin attacked at the start of the first lap around Woollastons and was joined by Brent Harris.  I did a long pull to help chase but was dropped along with Murray on the first steep climb - my ability to get into the break but exit soon after is in danger of becoming a habit.

Murray and I chased for a while and for sometime it looked like we would get back on but Murray was definitely weakening and every time he came through our speed would drop by about 4kph.  I towed him for the next couple of laps and then carried on while he drifted off.  The rest of A grade was nowhere to be seen and I was quite keen to keep it that way.  It was getting pretty cold now and you could see that there was snow falling around the Takaka Hill & Mt Campbell.  I crossed the line in 7th place - almost 2.5 minutes behind the winning group.  Chris C managed to come 4th and is now in 4th place overall - he is riding really well.  I'm currently in 6th place.  Still we have another 7 races to go so a lot can happen.  Paul is currently 2nd and is apparently going overseas so he will not complete the series which will move us all up 1 position.

The next race is the Brass Nipple and we have time trials the day before so it could be interesting if everyone is tired from the trials.

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