Race Report by Chris
A pleasant breeze blowing assisted me with my warm up on the way to the race at Kewdale. That is to say it was pretty windy and I had to push into the breeze the whole way out.
With B & D grade off second we had the chance to watch the A & C grade boys and girls duke it out.
A grade was on from the gun with a bunch of 6 or 8 getting an early break and they were never caught. The remainder got strung out and were pretty decimated by the finish, in fact they were lucky not to get lapped by the leading break. Ed Hollands took out the win from George Miller.
I didn’t witness the C grade finish but gather they were also pretty strung out on the last couple of laps.
Bruce and I were back for another crack at B grade and given the wind we knew it was going to be tough. We figured as per A grade you would need a group to get away and work together but neither of us were up for initiating this. Since Bruce had finished with the better sprint than I last week we agreed that we would look after ourselves and I would try get Bruce good position on the last couple of laps.
The pace was on from the gun which was as expected but things settled down after a couple of laps. We soon learned that there wasn’t really anywhere to hide in the wind and even with a tail wind there was no respite from the hurt.
Similar to last week the pace remained solid throughout the race with continual attacks, most coming along the back straight with the assistance of the tail wind. None of them stuck and it looked to be coming down to a bunch sprint when the sign for two laps to go was shown.
As discussed, Bruce had found my wheel and I started working towards the front of the bunch. Half way around the second last lap one of the guys launched a solo attack. Having seen him win previously using this tactic I wasn’t prepared to let him go and since no one else looked to be going after him I launched after him. I was thinking the bunch would chase and with Bruce on my wheel he would be protected.
Bruce saw that no one was chasing and decided to launch as well thinking if that the three of us could work together and stay away. I ran out of legs but Bruce managed to get across. Being stuck in no mans land I kept the pressure on thinking I could at least kick back into the bunch.
The bunch conveniently caught me at the bottom corner and I did what I could to make them have to work a little
harder to close the gap. Once they were passed I sat up realizing there wasn’t much more I could do. I counted about 4 seconds gap from the break to the bunch and figured they had it and it was now down to Bruce.
As I came around to the finish line I learnt that Bruce and done the job and Team SPR had notched up its second win of the season.
Well done Bruce.
For those interested, here is my race data. I’ve added a dashed line showing the average speed, you can clearly see the run into and out of the wind on each circuit. Nasty!
