20 Jul 2008

It’s been a pretty relaxed weekend this time around, with an easy spin down beach road and a short race at the You Yangs. I headed out on Saturday morning only slightly hung over from a friends going away the night before. The trip down to Mordy felt far too easy, and I found out why riding back into a headwind that felt more like a brick wall.

Waking to pouring rain on Sunday wasn’t a good sign. However the You Yangs didn’t fail us with the sandy soil soaking it all up. There was barely a puddle to be seen. The race started easily along the flat singletrack of Kurrajong. That didn’t stop me stacking (on a straight of all places!) and losing a few positions. Fortunately I moved back up to the lead group before we started climbing the steep technical link track. This sorted the men from the boys, with me and Murray Spink going clear. We rode together for most of the loop of Stockyards, with Murray getting a small gap on me before we climbed out. He held a 5 second gap as we zoomed down Great Circle Drive at over 70kph, and as I spun my 1×9 gearing like crazy on the lower slopes. Eventually my legs could spin no more and he pulled away, taking it out by a minute.

With the race over we dug into the free soup and did our best to stay warm before Simon, Murray, Sarah, and I headed out for another lap. The club asked us to keep an eye out for a rider who had failed to return. We found him with a busted derailleur several Ks from the finish, and called his friend to arrange a pick up. With sweeping duties complete we continued on and hit up some of the fun tracks in stockyards before taking the link track back down into Kurrajong and back to the car.

All up it was a fun four hour day, and a nice warm up for the big race next weekend. Hopefully my legs come to the party this time and I can improve on the mediocre performance of last round.

Posted by erin @ 6:30 am

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