I love handicap races, I love it how everyone works together to acheive the same goals...to catch limit and ride away from scratch as though you've stolen something! Unlike scratch races, there is less mucking around and different tactics involved in handicaps because if you slow up the slightest bit, scratch will swamp over you like a tidal wave before you know it and there is no point attacking your bunch because you need to work as a team to try and keep your advantage over the other riders.
Anyway, to the race. I started in C grade which was the 2nd bunch out on the road, about 10min back from limit. 7 min after us was B grade than scratch was another 10min back from them, so scratch had given limit 27min head start which may seem like a lot but over 135km of racing...Its nothing really at all. No wonder scratch caught us with just over 40km to go!
Our bunch started off riding pretty solidly, so solidly in fact that it unfortunatley meant i was feeling my lack of proper warm up and it wasn't long before i was sitting on the back of the bunch just trying to hold on! Fortunately it didn't take long for me to ride my legs into it and i was back pulling my fair share of the weight..definitely not the best way to start a very long day in the saddle! Thats another thing i like about handicaps is that it is an excuse for me to ride really hard and fast for as long as i possibly can and see just how far i can push myself and if i find i've pushed myself beyond my limits, i can simply miss a turn to recover and then rejoin the pace line.
Nothing overly excited happened in the race, except for when scratch and block caught us with just over 40km to go, a little bit earlier than we would have liked, but hey it was awesome riding in such a massive pack and trying to maneouver around the bunch proved quite challenging but fun at the same time! Thinking back on our small advantage, we were pretty much doomed to feel the wrath of the scratch markers! From then on it was a bit sketchy. We'd already caught limit and so the whole race ha come together and we had a bunch of around 90 people! Definitely one of the biggest bunches i've been in! At one point i looked down at my speedo and i was free wheeling at over 50km/hr on the flat.. we were flying! There was a lot of bustling in the bunch as some of the less experienced riders were trying to mix it up with the A graders which resulted in one pretty nasty looking crash but fortunately I don't think he was seriously injured...The pack was still togethere when we reached the last climb which was about 1km long and abut 5km from the finish when Michael Matthews from the Canberra Suzuki team attacked, forcing a chase in the bunch. I was two riders behind Chloe Hosking and Vicki Whitelaw, keeping a close eye on them as i was battling them for the title of 1st woman and they went with the attack but the riders between them and myself didn't have the strength to kick with them so i had to kick around them in the wind and didn't have the legs to bridge the last gap. I think it was partly due to the fact that i didn't eat or drink much during the race..thinking back on it, it has to be the reason. I mean i drunk less than 1 bottle and had 2 GUs on a 135km ride... not much. I just got distracted.
Anyway, we reached the summit and I decended by myself as I was caught between groups and the race was really strung out and it wasn't long before a small group caught me but they had bsically thrown in the towel already and i wanted to try minimise my losses as much as possible so opted to ride the rest solo. I'm not too sure how i finished up overall but i didn't finish too far from the back of the first pack. Vicki managed to ride away from Chloe over the top of the climb to pick up first woman and Michael won overall.
Overall, I was pretty happy with how I rode except for what happened in the closing stages of the race, but you learn from your mistakes and next time i'll pay closer attention to what I eat and drink during racing as well as to react quicker to attacks in the bunch and not hang around for the person in front of you to go.
The bike was awesome though, loved it. It was heaven. Made the ride very enjoyable and i totally rate the SRAM. Thanks again Trek and RideShop :D
Next on the agenda is the ACTAS road camp which is held on the 27 Nov-1st Dec. Its gonna be tough. But bring the pain, i can't wait!
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