After much pressure from toby here is the race report for last weekend’s B grade road race down In in Pemberton.

The day started with a bit of a sleep-in, waking up at a nice lazy 6.30. After looking outside, the sky looked pretty grey, never the less I started to get ready. As we got ready to start warming up it started to rain, thankfully I decided to bring my rollers so started to warm up as Toby and Paul went for a ride. After a good warm-up I put on my jacket (which I would later regret) and we headed to the start line, which wasn’t the easiest ride carrying spare wheels riding downhill.  Never the less we signed in and lined up.

On the line Nic told me he didn’t want to ride with the group in the wet and was going to make a break as soon as he could. The commissar gave us a few words and we were off. Sure enough Nic went off the front, and after the first rail crossing Toby was already one water bottle down. We started over the rolling hills when a few went off the front and caught up with Nic the break was now starting to look pretty strong as Emma Pooley was sitting on my wheel I thought it would be time to bridge the gap but to my surprise I was the only rider to go across. In the break the pace started to pick up as we tried to make the gap bigger. Doing so, we dropped the other riders so it was down to three: Nic, Will Heath and I. Knowing we had a long downhill ahead of us and the group would be able to drag us in we stepped up the pace on the corners and got out of sight. Some hard roll throughs kept us away till the bottom of pump hill.

The group was momentarily back together until pump hill started to sort all the riders out. By the top of the hill myself, Nic and Will were in another break away now consisting of eight riders, one of whom was Emma Pooley. The break stayed together for the remainder of the first lap then somewhere between there and the highway we were down to 6 riders.

Once again up pump hill the group splintered slightly but reformed just after. Then flying back into town with the rain coming straight into us and carbon rims still not wanting to brake we were over the start/finish line with one more lap of pump hill to go. As we approached I attacked getting about half way up before Emma’s counter attack, dragging three guys behind her caught me. As I went to chase, the legs decided they’d had enough still with the lead four in front of me and a south west rider tried to catch back on but to no prevail. Once more down the hill into town and crossing the line I was tired, wet but happy with my race.

After waiting around for presentations when they decided that out of a six man break I had got 7^th and apparently the timing devices are over ruled my the line marshals – who of course couldn’t see my race number under my jacket!! All in all a great weekend of cycling.