13th Dec - Kerrs 4 Stage Tour

This mini tour would be one of my favourites.  Stage 1 started in Richmond and finished at the top of the Reay.  I got in a last minute break with Dean Fulton.  Unfortunately Dean wasn't really that interested in continuing the break.  Being somewhat committed by this stage I towed him to the bottom of Reay's and tried to make it up the hill.  Dean got there first and I was caught by Caleb 3/4 of the way up.  Thankfully I managed to hold off everyone else and so placed 3rd.

The next stage is a time trial from the top of the Reay to the top of Kerrs.  I struggled a bit on this one but managed to place 4th although I was now about 1.5 minutes down.

After a brief lunch we started stage 4 which goes from the bottom of Kerrs, down to Korere and then over Spooners to finish in Belgrove.  There were several attacks some of which I went with but it was unlikely that I would gain 1.5 minutes.  Caleb attacked at and broke away with a small group.  They started to pull out some time on us.  At Kohatu a few of us started to up the pace to chase them down.  I had decided that I might as well help Dean retain the lead and did some big turns.  The pace was quite high and in the rolling terrain leading up to the foot of Spooners we lost a few people.  We caught them just at the base of the hill.  I was pretty tired from my effort but managed to reach the top just behind the leading bunch.  At the end of the stage I still retained my 4th placing but had pulled in some time against Mike Anderson who was 3rd.

The last stage runs from Belgrove to Ranzau.  This stage is a mass start with all the grades combined together which can make for some scarey riding.  My solution to this was to ride on the front and to try and keep the pace high.  This worked pretty well.  I made a last minute attack (mainly to try and get out of the way of the other grades sprinting) which didn't quite make it but was close.

I finished 4th overall and was fairly happy with how things had gone.

Dec 6th - Armstrong Prestidge

My first race for the Start & Garter Tasman Team was not exactly a great example of my work.  My first of many mistakes was to start too far back in the pack - this was partly aided by the fact that there was no visible demartcation between the Elite race and the rest of the riders.  Consequently I discovered later that according to the time across the mat at the start I was 23 seconds down before we even got underway.

While the "Neutral" component of the race was supposed to be riden at a leasurly 30kph for those of us at the back who where trying to move up in the group it was more like 40kph.  This was soon made more difficult when the road (we took up both lanes of the road) narrowed to a single lane and I found myself losing what little gains I had achieved.  The race started fast!  Being so close to the back you found yourself sprinting flat out and then slamming on the breaks to make it around the narrow corners and small round a bouts that pepper the Cashmere road.  I watched a guy hit a dividing barrier and saw him bounce into the oncoming lane with his bike heading in the opposite direction.  I passed a number of people who appeared to be moving backwards at the same speed that I was moving forwards.  Unfortunately I reached the back of the main group just in time to sprint up a small rise - this was the last I saw of them as I was exhausted.

I settled down into my "Survival" pace and caught up with 2 women who sat behind me for a short distance.  We were soon joined by around 8 other women and 1 guy.  This large gaggle of ladies presented me with a tactical problem.  They were riding slower than what I wanted to but knowing that Jeannie was further up the road somewhere I decided that it would be bad form to tow up a goup of competitors to her and so had to adjust to their pace.  As we neared Gebbes pass they all seemed to slow down.  I took this as my queue to split and rode away up the pass.  I was beginning to catch the odd individual now which was a little encouraging but they were certainly few and far between.  The road to Lyttelton is really quite pretty and the weather was great - not that I was supposed to be noticing.  I carried on at a good steady pace.  The climb up to Evans pass was no big deal and the descent was excellent.  There was a bit of a breeze coming now from the sea which slowed my progress back to the finish line.  I placed 103rd out of 140 and finished in 2:13:51.  This made me the slowest SG Rider - something I hope to not repeat next year!

At least I finished in 1 piece - another rider in the social race clipped a sign on the way down the hill and died.  In the light of that 103rd is really an exceptional result.