sorry, this one slipped past the email the other day and i forgot to post it.  dan’s race report from last sunday’s southern districts race at pickering brook – peter.

Joe, Matt and myself met at Coode St and rolled out with the SPR hills ride regulars to get a tow out to the hills as they were also climbing Welshpool Rd first up. We picked up Brendan around Roe Hwy and we arrived at the start in Pickerbrook nice and early, a welcome change, not so nice were the yokels who enjoyed driving past us way too close, made me wish I was wearing some brown Ag2r knicks.

When we got there we realised that It was really cold in the shade and for better or worse it was decided that standing in the sun would be as good as a warm up. Brendan, Shane and me signed up for B grade.

There were 16 starters in B grade. We rolled out fairly sedately and headed around the course for our first of six laps rather conservatively. The course starts with a downhill into a corner, continues on and then rises gently for ~1km, there is a sharp downhill and a steep rise that you can get 80% up on momentum, then another gentle rise, a bit of a drop, before the incline out of Repatriation Rd onto Pickering Brook Rd, finishing again with a downhill. For the next few laps there were a few surges by the same three or so guys, but not too much distance was ever created.

Come the last lap most of the starters were still present, maybe three had left, including one guy who had his Mavic R-Sys (“Exploding Wagon Wheels”) pick up on a rear wheel bearing I think. Blake Howard and a guy from Riders Choice got a gap on the downhill at the start of the last lap and that gap was being maintained on the first climb. I checked with Brendan if he thought they would stay away, he seemed to think not, which put me at ease. Slowly, after the short downhill, we started to make time on the two. When we got close enough Theo Yates and Tony Anderson from Arbitrage got across and we picked up the Rider’s Choice guy. As we were approaching Pickering Brook Rd there were three off the front (Theo, Tony and Blake) and Shane was doing a big effort to reel them in, I was on Shane’s wheel. I called out some encouragement to Shane and he checked to see that I was on his wheel and then he gave it some schtick. This created a small gap behind me and he was able to bridge up over ~0.5-1km to the front three just as Theo gave it a kick. I just missed getting on his wheel and had to try and drag him for the line, but I finished about a bike length back in second. A huge thanks goes to Shane who smashed it to get me up to the front group, it was really appreciated:) 

A big thanks to all the competitors who were there as it was a very sociable race and Southern Districts for putting some races on. I would encourage more SPR crew to come down for the next race, the course is certainly not as hard as any of the hills on a Sunday ride.

-Hughesy