First write up and only second race so go here goes,

It all started with waking up heading down to the primary school to number boxes on a couple of pieces of paper then, with that out the way I headed down to collie,

Leaving myself three hours to get down there and it only took two, I had time on my side, so after finding a car park saying hi to davina and waiting for registration to open, I was changed and onto the rollers once I had warmed up I headed to the start line, being a handicap race there where groups starting a different intervals, with stu and davina starting just before me with a 18 min handicap. with some words of advice from davina they were off, then at the 14 and a half mark it was our turn, knowing there was a group 1 min 30 behind us it was on, as everyone started to warm up the roll throughs got quicker and quicker, at around the 5km mark we had already lost two weaker or not they had decided to sit up and wait for the group behind or they just couldn’t hold on only they will know.

The pace started to ease up a bit when we started to realise the downhill to donnybrook was not as downhill as we had been told. We kept rolling through and in the distance we saw the first straggler off the 18 min group, I think we may have surprised him just a little bit as it took a bit of a sprint for him to tag on the back of us and quite a few k’s for him to start rolling though, at this stage we had caught 3 more one being davina. Closer to donnybrook the 13 min group had caught us and as we got even closer to donnybrook we had caught most of the riders in front.

As we entered donnybrook itself the group started to stretch out as there was a prize for the first into the town, after the turn around with all the groups from 13mins and above all together I believe the pace went through the roof with the call going out to keep the scratch riders off, the group started to split apart with the front riders getting some roll throughs going I managed to get a couple of turns in before I get stuck on the left and with a strong side wind and no protection I soon found myself with one other rider watching the front group of about 20 get further and further out of reach, taking it in turns we managed to keep a reasonable pace up then we were caught by a group of about 10 one of those riders being Stu, sharing the work with about the first five we were keeping a quick pace eventually me and Stu took off as we started the first climb back into collie, we caught another small group and they told us the front group was about four minutes in front.  taking this into account me and Stu kept going as we were both enjoying the climb, well as much as we could, further up we caught up with Davina who had managed to stick with the lead group up until it got vertical.  a little more working together and giving our legs a bit of a break along a slightly flat maybe even downhill section we started to gain some ground on the lead group. well as least that what I was thinking.  we hit our next climb and I decided to take off with 15kms from the finish. Finally I started to see land marks than I remembered were close to the start/finish so I ground my teeth and tried to keep up the pace, seeing the main street in collie and hearing cars behind me I knew I was close to the line and there was someone close behind I gave it one last surge and pushed it to the line finishing in 13^th position just behind me came A J with the fastest time.

All in all it was a great race well done to Stu and davina who finished 1^st out of the women