Neerabup, ‘where is that?’ I thought whilst walking out the door on Sunday morning, fortunately Satnav is my friend and I found the course with no problems.

 

Myself, Bruce and Brett were racing C (read sensible speed) grade, Chris was due to mix it up with us, but ended up pulling out due to a bad night with the little one at home.

 

I arrived at about half eight and saw some of the Rouleurs there all set up and looking very PRO. Ben was already sensibly getting the caffeine in as the morning was a little fresh. Parking, collecting my race number (lucky number red 12), and getting kitted up was no issue, oh aside from the fact that even though I’d remembered 2 pairs of shorts, 2 jerseys, 2 pairs of gloves I had no socks, fortunately Peter came to the rescue, funnily enough though he declined the offer of me washing and returning them after the race.

 

There were 31 of us registered for C grade so I did the usual checking out the colours of the numbers on everyone I could find to see if I recognised anybody that I would be racing against, there were a few from Renae’s race, ‘hopefully nobody recognises me’ I thought, especially after my last effort.

 

Ben and I went out to ride the course, we did this in a clockwise direction to avoid mixing with the juniors who were already racing, it was good, the road surface was mostly smooth tarmac apart from the start finish straight which was a bit rough, made a mental note not to come off in that spot as it was also downhill to the finish and we’d be going at a fair lick.

 

My warm up completed I hung around, had a brief chat with Stuart, found Bruce, saw Nicole warming up on her rollers, wished the others, Lorraine, Lisa and Peter a good race, and then waited. Jerrard and Dr Ronny had come to add their voice as supporters and Brendan was there to mix it up in A grade as well.

 

A grade off, B grade off, A grade women off, C grade men off, followed by B grade women 2 minutes later, one of our first objectives was not to get caught by the B grade women, for me the other two were to finish, and not fall off, optional was to mix it up a bit and see what would transpire.

 

Seven laps to complete, a leisurely 56km. Straight after the word “GO” one rider went off after the officials car like he’d left something in the trunk, he was on his own, I watched him go and thought ‘that’s a bit keen, I’ll just stay here for a bit’. The first two laps were busy, a few surges, riders hiding from the wind, a couple of leg stretching accelerations on the undulations, and our mate off the front standing there by the side of the course with what looked like broken pedal, oops…

 

There was a pretty strong headwind along Flynn Drive which was the first of the long straights on the rectangular course, add this to the undulations and I thought it could be a bit of a struggle later on, fortunately on the opposite side there would be a nice tailwind.

 

It was Lap 3 I think, I’d done a few turns at the front by then and was going OK, sticking in the top 5 or so, a few B grade riders came flying past, a breakaway group by the looks of it, and then the other 50 or so came trundling along a few seconds later, I saw Ben in the main group looking comfortable. The passing was slow but didn’t seem like an issue to me, the groups were separate, the commissionaire however didn’t seem to think so, he came haring past us in his ute, pulled in up the road to the side and gave it to us both barrels to slow down and let the B’s pass. There was a bit of moaning and a few comments like ‘we’re here to race as well you know’ but we all slowed, a van also came past and sat in front of us giving a nice draft, behind the commissionaires car, our race car and the B grade peleton. Needless to say Lap 3 was a bit of a write off until the traffic had dispersed.

 

Lap 4, let the race begin, again, now that everyone has had a bit of a rest, had a drink, and an energy gel, I think we passed the A grade women on this lap, there were a few shouts of encouragement from both sides but oxygen was a precious commodity so not too much yelling.

 

Lap 5, Bruce gapped the group after a strong pull up the back straight, I was 3^rd wheel and let him go to see who was going to react, there were a few guys that went after him before he got too far and soon enough we were all back together.

 

Lap 6 was much of the same, 2 guys got away in a similar spot to Bruce, I went to the front to make sure they didn’t get too far and held them at about 50m, by now the pace was stepping up and again on the start finish straight everyone came back together.

 

All up to the last lap then, the pace had quickened further and nobody was getting away, I certainly didn’t have the legs for it and it seemed neither did anybody else, we rounded the top corner as a group and hammered it down the back straight, I was quite content to sit back and watch the finale as I didn’t want a repeat of my previous tarmac kissing episode. Bruce went down the right and was squeezed out of third position, he did end up with a very credible fourth though, I rolled in a few metres back in 9^th after fending off some cheeky bugger who had tried to come past, I pushed on the pedals a little harder to stay ahead, what did he think this was, a race or something?

 

We were congratulated by the SPR supporters at the finish and rewarded with a slightly warm coke, thanks Peter I needed the sugar. All in all, mission accomplished, we all finished safely and I learnt a bit more about racing, had some fun, and most importantly didn’t get passed by the B grade women…

 

I had no speedometer with me so I was relying on how my legs were feeling for much of the race as to how fast I should go, however for those that are interested Brett (correct me if I’m wrong please) provided these details at the end, ave. race speed 38.3km/hr, last lap was 4-5km/hr quicker than the previous 6.

 

Thanks for reading, if you got this far, and hopefully next race we can get a few more numbers out there to stir things up a bit!