Benchmark Blunder

I was pretty keen to see how I did at the Nelson Benchmark round.  Things didn't go exactly as planned.  Mike Gane emailed me to ask what happened and my reply below really explains the whole sorry saga - need I say more?

Hi Mike,
Well we had the job of looking after the girls (Bronwyn & Karen). On
the first climb up Old Coach on the first lap Bronwyn dropped her
chain. She got on again and I waited at the top to pull her back to
the group except that even tucked up she couldn't keep up so I had to ease up a couple of times. Finally I realised that she wasn't going to make it back so I carried on to get back on myself.

Just as I was within striking distance of making contact the cars in
the caravan moved over to the left which blocked me off (the
commissionaires were pretty tough on going over the white line so I
couldn't go that way. By the time we got through cemetery corner is
was all over for me. I kept on riding and then on lap 3 got a
puncture. So in the end I placed last but averaged just over 33kph
for the 130km which wasn't too bad.

Karen of course got relegated at the last minutefor being pushed up the hill by David Ayre.