Bike the Bays Elite Sprint race

I entered the Bike the Bays elite 50km road race that was held on the Auckland Waterfront. About 150 riders were entered in the 7am event and guns were all out blazing from the beginning! I found myself closing quite a few gaps early on as the pace was over 50km/h over the initial first few kms. This speed actually splintered the pack up very quickly and there was perhaps 40-50 riders remaining in the front bunch. There were a number of attacks going but none were sticking. After we had made the turn around at St Heliers for the first time, a break of 10 that initially looked promising got up the road containing most of the strongest riders but the break was not lapping through consistently and the chase behind was determined. It was back together again after several minutes. I just drifted to the back of the pack and hang out down there before doing anything else. This was a mistake, as I did not notice a break of four riders slip away at the turn around near Parnell Baths. I only noticed that the break containing Matt Sillars, Gordon McCauley, Tom Finlay and Richard Speer had about 30 seconds on us when we came through St Heliers for the second time. I was so surprised that I went to the front immediately and did some hard pulls in the attempt to bring them back. I found that no-one was really interested or organised enough to work on the front. The two subway guys in the pack were cruising along as they had their team-mate up the road. They did not disrupt the chase on the front at all like some of the other riders who had mates in the break! With one lap to go, I tried amp myself up by shaking a fist at the break passing by in the opposite direction and attacked out of the turn around. Acky came with me along with Chris Faithful - but Chris was content to sit in our draft while we swopped hard turns on the front in the bid to bridge up to the break. The break was obviously going hard out and had no intentions of slowing. After a few minutes in between the break and the main bunch, we were caught. I sensed that if I peeled off the front right away, the whole pack would slow down considerably so I just stayed on the front riding at tempo till someone came around me. However, the break was drawing away - now more than 30 seconds up the road. The rest of the race was quite frustrating as there was no real organised chase. I would have thought that the KiwiVelo young guys would have organised themselves on the front since they were not represented in the break. About 500 meters from the finish I surged up near the front and put in a decent launch to which Myron Simpson jumps onto my wheel and then passes me with Josh England in tow. We ended up 26 seconds behind the eventual winner, Tom Finlay from Subway. He did well to beat in People's Champion, Gordon McCauley! I finished in the top 10 in what was a reasonable race workout. I then participated in the 9am Bike the Bays ride with my girl-friend to ride two more laps of the waterfront followed by New Zealand Natural ice-cream back in Mission Bay.

2008 Update

I'm back in New Zealand, have been for the past several months after living in Austin (US) for six months last year. I have been racing but not doing the major tours this year due to fitness not high enough compared to the same time last year. I also had 2 crashes in December which hindered my training progress, the first crash was at the Christchurch City Criterium and I got up and still managed to finish 2nd. I was sore for quite a while though. The other crash was at the Mount when I rolled a tubular on one of the corners when in perfect position to take a sprint during the prime lap. I swapped wheels and got back into the race - finishing 3rd in the sprint but I was disqualified for rolling the tubular. I tried protesting but to no avail, however I did get into the Elite race for free but I lasted only 12mins in that race! I am getting back on track with my training and new coach. I started my training in the 2nd week of January after nearly a month of no real training. I've been doing the Waterfront time-trials to gauge my fitness levels and improvements each week. The Takapuna Grandprix is coming up this Friday night and that is a fun race to do. I've done it for the past two years and looking forward to competing again this year.

training up-date

This is my first posting on this new blog. I still use my current one, but hopefully will transfer all over to bloggerspot. I put in more than 600km in the first 6 days of 2007 and on the sixth day I was shattered as I raced hard for 120km (got dropped after 75km) at the recent Cambridge road race. There were quite a few classy riders present including Logan Hutchings, Mike Northey and Aaron Strong. All the racers were pretty fresh compared to me coming straight from the Tour de Vineyards! I guess I did ok since I had already been racing hard over the last week. Furthermore, I only had 5 hours sleep the previous night which is not conducive to putting on the best display. I went to visit my brother who lives near Hamilton and promptly fell asleep in his bed for 3 hours. I really needed the sleep and felt much better after waking up. I still had to drive all the way back to Orewa and it was past 1am before I got into my own bed. I took the next two days off from training since I was still feeling tired and my coach, Nick Flyger, told me to take some good rest days before hitting the new training program he has provided me with that has a big track focus! I cycled for 3 hours today in atrocius weather conditions, but once out there I actually felt good and the wearing my complete Hansaton riding kit (made by Tineli Performance Wear) kept me nice and warm. I spent the rest of the day just hanging about home and relaxing. Going for another longish ride tommorrow (about 4 hours).

This month, I will be focusing on riding lots of miles and will be riding in the Tour of Wellington on the 24th-28th January - its looking to be a great event with a good number of international riders coming out to compete. The month of Feb will see me focus on alot of high intensity stuff in preparation for NZ Track Nationals in March.