SGW Winter Series Race 1

Well it was winter series race time again.  The course was Dominion, Moutere, WaiWest, Ranzau - a pretty standard setup.  The first race of the series is always a bit of a lottery.  No-one really knows the form of the other riders and who to look out for and even if they do they often have other motives and events that they are wanting to peak for.

We started out pretty slowly and it wasnt until Dominion where the pressure came on.  I was riding on the front and was holding a pretty resonable pace in order to discourage attacks.  Jono and some others attacked about midway through the climb.  I managed to keep up and we all came over the brow of the hill together.  Caleb, Ashley and I kept the pace going along to the Cemetry corner but we still had quite a large group.  There were a couple of attacks going along the road to Moutere but the next major one came on the Moutere Hill.  Max attacked and then Jono went to bridge and a few us went with him.  I rememeber looking at the speedo and seeing 40kph and thinking that this was pretty fast for going uphill.  We passed Max and continued on.  It was all bought back together again coming down the hill.  Having spent far too much time at the front I didn't react when Caleb, Dave and a couple of others rolled off the front.  We still had a large number of good riders with us so I thought we would catch up easily.  Of course we didn't!  There were very few left that were willing to work and then Robin attacked on Burkes bank having sat in the group for most of the ride.  We got close to closing in on them and it was good training.  I think I came around 11th or 12th - so just out of the points.