18 August
Once again I was feeling super smooth and efficient after some more training on my power cranks.
Sat evening was a short, intense 50km crit around a 1.7km circuit with a slight hill in it and seven dangerous corners. I wanted to be racing my new Power Tap race wheel, but the tubby glue hadn’t dried yet, so wasn’t about to risk riding it in a tight crit! We started flat out in wet conditions, and I struggled for a while to get to the front, as I had ended up starting mid-field on the line. When I finally got to the front after about nine laps, I saw that three riders were off the front, so immediately attacked up the incline to get across. Two guys came with me, and we formed a six-man break. Thankfully everyone was willing to work, and we opened up a ten second lead. We managed to stretch it to 20sec, but due to us sprinting for $ primes, the peleton started to close on us, led by Colevita who were chasing hard.
With three laps to go, it was do or die for us in the break, so everyone committed 100%. With half a lap to go, I put in an all out attack on the small climb, and got a few seconds advantage. Unfortunately for me, three guys worked together to chase me down on the descent around to the line. That left four of us to contest the sprint, but I didn’t have much left after my attack, and only managed third place.
19th August
On Sun it was still raining, hard! We had to do 62 laps of the same course as Sat night, which totaled about 108km. This time I ended up stuck right at the back on the start line, and it was quite a process working my way to the front and dodging all the crashes that were ensuing! It was very sketchy indeed, with 15-20 crashes taking place throughout the race. I just thank God for keeping me on my bike and out of trouble! My hands and neck started getting pretty sore from being in the drops and on the breaks the whole time.
With one and a half laps to go, I bridged solo to a Kodak Gallery rider who was about 10seconds in front of the strung out field. I made the mistake of hesitating when I got to him, hoping to get a few moments to recuperate, but I should have just kept on going. I went around him after a few seconds, and dug deep, but Helthnet had a good lead-out going, and brought us back with half a lap to go. I decided to slowly drift back through the field as they came past me, as I was expecting there to be a crash on the run-in to the line. Coming around the final corner, my intuition proved right, as there was a big pile of guys on the floor! I ended up 14th, just happy to be in one piece!
I raced my Power Tap race wheel (20hole hub, Sapim CX-Ray spokes, Easton Tempest rim), and it felt great. The file looks pretty intense, with lots of peaks thanks to all the corners in the race. My max power was only 950 watts, but that was part of my attack, so I sustained high power for quite a while after that. The norm power was 278, for 2hrs 17min, 105km, basically consisting of accelerating, then coasting through wet and slippery corners, before accelerating again.
