sorry for the lateness off the report and the content as well.  things have been a bit hectic lately.

firstly the formation of a club and the committee office bearers were appointed before the ride began.  as the number of nominations didn’t outweigh the number of positions available, there was no vote needed.

president – peter mah

vice pres – brendan nichol

secretary – stuart gee

treasurer – ryan fynn

team manager – chris norris

development officer – mike bonner

marketing/promotions manager – lorraine hartland

events manager – lisa wood

committee members – noel michelson, julian johnson, judd otley

 

these positions will be confirmed at a later date when we hold an official agm meeting.  we actually need members first for this to go ahead.  however, this plus the draft constitution is all we need to approach cycling wa to become affiliated to allow people to join via the regular channels.

as for the ride, it was a very controlled event and as we were heading through some of the main drags of the city, the group got caught at many a traffic light.  with our numbers totally about 60 it was no wonder we didn’t get a smooth run.  as we made our way up grand prom, paul broke away from the front and i thought that he must have to take an early mark.  however, it was a spot that we used to go hard back in the day and as he hasn’t spent that much riding time with us lately, wondered why no-one else was following him.  the hill at cresswell tested a few legs and james and brendan fought it out for line honors.  we regrouped at the top to find paul already waiting for us.  by this point i don’t think we had lost anyone.

we picked our way across to herdsmans lake (swamp) where we were to begin our next hard section.  the nice wide roads and double lane allowed us to pick the pace up nicely.  dr ronny made a valiant attempt to set the early pace as he now has the cervelo back, but found out that the training on the learsport had not increased his capacity that much.  the group splintered a bit but little echelons formed and people more or less worked together to keep their group going.  i wasn’t at teh front so not sure who (if anyone) claimed line honors as first to james and chris’ special synchronized spilling round-about.  a small wait for some back markers and we left julian to fix his flat as he said that he would intercept us along the way.

more extra kms at a nice pace found us in claremont and onto the normal road home via dalkeith.  the pace picked up in the usual spot and the big boys had an opportunity to push hard on the rolling hills.  the regroup at mounts bay gave little reprieve as the pace was soon on once the lights turned green.  with my bike still making bad gear crunching noises (i need to see yas) i was in no place to sprint and needed to stay seated as long as possible.  it all got a bit messy towards the end and there was some drifting of lanes during the sprint when there was cars coming.  i opted to sit up at that stage and let the group go.

a entire weekend of watching the crits followed and that plus taking in excess of 2000 photos (of which i only kept 800) has been a bit of a time waster for me at night.  the crits were good and apart from watching ryan get spat out the back of each race, the open men’s race was a bit ho-hum for me.  the open women’s however, had quite a few of our spr girls fighting it out. wins by holly, davina and bec and a podium picture of all three with their spr hats on, made it more exciting as we had a vested interest.  well done to lisa also for stepping up and taking the plunge with the other fleet elite girls.