Sunday 14^th of April 2013 was one of the biggest cycling days seen in Western Australia. Club SPR members were dispersed widely – El Prez and some mates joined the 1500+ riders heading to the hills for the 3 / 5 dams rides, a few did the regular club hills ride, a group of our top guns lined up for D4 of the Tour de Perth, some even turned up for the swim / ride / runny thing at Mandurah (won’t use the ‘T’ word in a family-friendly blog like this). At least 30 other riders, myself included, lined up in SPR club colours, lined up to contest the 3^rd (and last) running of the  UWCT Perth 2013 UCI world cycling tour race.

I was almost a non-starter. A bit nervous already (this was to be my first race after breaking my wrist, collar bone & scapula in December) I was very disheartened to get up to the sound of light rain on the roof in my suburb 10 km south of the CBD. The Bold Park circuit has a couple of fast left hand turn corners, with the Oceanic Drive onto West Coast Highway turn having the added bonus of a very slippery painted lane to contend with, so I was not looking forward at all to trying to get round in a big pack in the wet. To my relief, I arrived at the course to find dry roads –  down south  continued to get some drizzle but we stayed dry all morning.

The 50-54’s were one of the largest groups, with 55 registered for the event and 49 riders lining up on the starting line. We had the other oldies (the 55-59’s) as company. The beginning was a bit disorganised – we were just told to ‘line up in your groups – OK 1^st group goes now, 2^nd group off next…’ it was a matter of finding people with tags the same colour as yours and hoping for the best. Stuart G, Greg, Dale, Mike B, Mark S, myself and a few others made up the SPR numbers. No reminders were given at the start as to how many laps of the course for each age group (we had 12, some groups had younger 14), not that the reminder would have done much good, as we were shown a ‘3 laps to go’ sign at the beginning of our last lap…!

The first few laps were relatively gentle. The pace started to warm up a bit on lap 3, with a few riders attacking on the flat, only to be caught relatively quickly by the group. On lap 5, Hilton McMurdo managed to sneak away at the end of West Coast Highway and Paul Miller was the only one who was able to get across with him. There was an attempt by a few of us to bridge the gap but there was not enough organisation to maintain the momentum and the two leaders rode very strongly together to the finish, with Miller taking out the sprint at the end (not surprising, given that he has tricolour hoops on his sleeve in honour of his status as an ex Australian road champion).

The rest of us maintained a fairly steady pace, with 4 sub 12 minutes laps and a few others close to the 12 min mark. It is a bit hard to work out the times given the different distances but, to put it in perspective, some of the top finishers in the 45-49’s  only did 3 sub 12 min laps, none as fast as our fastest (11.24).  (The pace this year was in complete contrast to our age group’s effort at the Kings Park circuit last year, where we dawdled around for 4 laps and almost got caught by the other age groups.) As per usual, Mike B did a lions share of the work up the front, Stew & I tried to help out as much as we could and another SPR rider (sorry, forgot his name) was very prominent for most of the race.

Our pre-race tactics had been to try and push the pace up Oceanic with the aim of gradually dropping some of the bigger riders on the climb. Unfortunately the hill just wasn’t long enough for this – on at least 3 laps a group of between 6 & 8 maintained a fairly aggressive roll along West Coast Highway and I was sure we had split the pack, only to roll down Rochdale, left into Stephenson and onto Perry Lakes Drive to find that the stragglers had caught up +/- held on. We were back to a group of 30 – 40 at the bottom of Oceanic again… And again….And again….And again….

The pack did get a bit thinner as the race rolled on but there were still at least 30 at the beginning of the last lap. The work I had done during the middle laps caught up with me and I really struggled on the last climb up Oceanic. It felt like being on the training laps again with Jonno driving the pace; I turned last into West Coast Highway 5 metres off the pack. Head down, thrash myself as hard as I can, exhausted, 500 m down the road, legs screaming with pain – still 5 metres off the pack. So near, sooo far. Try again for another 500 m – same result. I was just about to throw in the towel when I realised that the tail of the pack would have to slow a bit on the left into Rochdale and I took the corner fast and just managed to get back on about ½ way down the hill to the Stephenson corner. Not sure who was driving, but it was a fast finish down the straight. I finished at the back (20^th in my age group), unfortunately Mike B had done too much during the race to challenge the sprinters and finished 14^th, 1 spot (and less than 1 second), I think, out of the qualifying the group. Stew was strong at the end and grabbed 6^th spot, should be a Q, I think (last year the 25% were on registered riders….)

Congratulations to all who completed, especially those who qualified (a bit hard to work out, I know Jerry got thru, I think Ryan did, I am sure there are others).  I know a few road really strongly but just missed out.

Special kudos to Queen Amanda Nabi, who took out line honours in her age group in both the time trial and the road race, and also managed 4^th and 2^nd overall in the 2 events.

We were all very appreciative of the loyal SPR members who turned up early to set up the tent, yell support and encouragement, hand out drinks en-route and offer a place to meet and greet after the race. Thanks heaps Nathan,  Rhian, Toby, Mark deC and the other hardy souls (apologies, didn’t get your names) for their support.