Racing

So I had my first couple of races for years during the last two weeks. I only had my new/old bike which I had only ridden for about 45 minutes prior to the first race, but as they say in the classics you have to be in it to win it.

Race one was a handicap – which is generally the way it goes in club racing in Australia in the country towns. Basically the a bunch of blokes rock up to a windy wet piece of road in the middle of nowhere and in groups of 3-6 ride their rings off to try and catch the group in front and stay away from the group behind. It is pretty much a team time trial for most of the race until the groups might start to come together near the end.

Back in the good old days (BITGOD), I was a scratch rider meaning I was in the last group to go, but having not raced for 5 years, I was kinda hopeful that I would at least get a chance to settle back into things for a couple of races, but I always say you have to be prepared to take your medicine and that it is not the handicappers fault that you have let yourself turn into a fat sack of poo for the last half a decade, and so if I was put on scratch I was just going to have to suck it up.

They took pity on me and I was put into third scratch. There was just three of us and so I thought we would just cruise along and wait for the groups behind to catch up and then I would be able to see how I was actually going. It was freezing cold and wet – welcome back. I was OK right at the start but once warmed up I was actually going really well. We caught the group in front within 15km and only one of them managed to stay with us. We passed other riders who were not able to stay on and before I knew it we were coming into the last 5km with no sign of anyone behind, and there seemed to be one rider about 500 meters in front. I rode on the front for the whole last 5k and instructed the other guys to let me lead them out for a good sprint. Anyway the guy in front won by 20 meters and we rolled in together behind. Scratch and second scratch were about 1 min 30 secs behind, so even though there ended up being about 8 of them, they only took 3 minutes from us. So back to scratch for me straight away after 1 race, which is kind of good and bad!

The most significant thing about the day was that the club now has a set of proper club rooms with change rooms and all. This led to the situation where I spent 10 min talking to one of the old guys from the club who stood there naked swinging a piece about the size of a babies leg, while I was packing something about the size of what you would use as bait if you were trying to catch a medium size trout, but shit what can you do?

Second race was a scratch race with about 9 facing the starter in A grade. I had done a couple of big rides during the week and felt pretty crap right from the start. I realized a scratch race was going to test me with lots of surging and general carrying on, and I was right. I managed to stay with things easily for the first 2 thirds of the race, but once the attacks started I could not follow strongest couple of blokes – was not far off though.