So a couple of weeks ago I found myself lining up at the start line for the 102km Collie to Donnybrook Classic, a handicapped race. I was in the second group on the road, +8 minutes from the lead group, and a bit concerned by the strength of some of the rides in my handicap group (Anke Hoskins I am looking at you). I figured it was a handicap race, so would be a bit easier than a normal race right? Huh, actually no.

Also I’d been told all the things not to do wrong in your first race:

1. Don’t experiment with new food – but my bike shop was out of the Bloks gels I normally use so gels it had to be.
2. Get a decent warm up – but the registration and bike prep took longer than expected so I only had about 5 minutes
3. Eat more than a few hours beforehand – well it was two hours before but I think because I was nervous my digestion was not so great

All this contributed to me feeling like I wanted to hurl my guts just a few kms into the race as the speed picked up from the start and we hit a few small climbs. I lost contact with the group and at that point swore I would never race again. TOMR? Not a chance. 5km in, 100km to go, I figured it was going to be a long hard lonely day.

But fortunately, although handicap races are hard, there are some benefits. If you get dropped, it’s not all over, and I’ve decided they’re tactically very complex. It’s hard to know when to push hard, and when to ease up and recover. From memory I had just caught back onto Steph Lim’s wheel, and then a couple of guys went past us. At this point we both jumped and got a nice tow along as they were both happy to do turns on the front. We maintained a pretty good average and slowly reeled in a bunch of riders from our start group, who were all strung out along the road in front of us.

Once the group was big enough we started doing roll throughs to maintain the speed. I started suffering again at this point, but I was happy that I could contribute a little to the group. It’s a bit hard to hide on complete roll throughs anyway. I was impressed that we managed to hold off the group who were 1 minute behind us on the road until about the 40km mark, although according to Jack Chang a few of them missed the first right hand turn at the start, which may have given us an extra 30 seconds over that group. The group was quite big by this point. Louise McKay, who had suffered at the start and dropped off, had been caught up with this group and obviously recovered well as she flew past, and the speed ramped up again and by about 45km I was dropped again.

From there it was a pretty lonely 55km TT home, apart from yells of encouragement from the remaining speedy SPR riders on the road as they flew past. But I tried not to look at the odometer and tried to appreciate the scenery (it was very pretty). I chicked a couple of guys in the last 21km over the hilly terrain so was happy with that and averaged 31km/h (3 hours 18 minutes), faster than I thought I could go. Overall it was a ride of firsts, and everyone was very encouraging, SPR or other, and somehow the pain was forgotten a bit once the finish line was reached. TOMR doesn’t feel so impossible now.