Going Solo

Had a good day at the Eildon Road Race today soloing off the front to win by about 4 minutes from the remainders of the A grade peleton.

The circuit was fantastic and big thanks to Blackburn CC for putting on such a good road race. We did 2x46k loops with a nice ~7k climb up skyline road coming out of Eildon.

We rode gruppo compatto to the first climb then I had a pretty hard dig and got away. I eased up, waited for my VIS teamate Eric Sheppard to catch me then paced him up the climb and we proceeded to swap turns along the flat back towards the start at Thornton. At one stage the chasers had us back in their sight but I said to Eric we just needed to make the bottom of the climb and we were home as we had the others nailed once it got a little vertical.

10k from the bottom of the second climb Eric made the call to drop back and I kept going chewing some stem and grovelled a flat stick TT effort to the bottom of the climb. 2nd time up I was in my element just in the 'zone' or so to speak. Then just rode the descent trying not to drop it then jammed it to the line for a good days work.

The highlight of the day was the freshly baked date scones in healesville on the trip out, definitely gave me the winning edge.

I am now looking forward to getting on my front and rear Bouwmeester Echelons and getting slammed in the gutter at the 100k champs in Port Fairy next weekend. I have ridden the front a couple of times and it feels very nice but after I glue a tyre on properly to the rear it will be great to rip it up on some proper race wheels. Last time I enjoyed such a luxury was the first stage in the Tour of Thailand! After that I cracked both of my previous race wheels, a fork and a new 11spd Campy lever which is worth more than my life insurance policy! Not to mention my mate Langers who wrote off two expensive race wheels and cracked his VIS issue Bianchi in 3 places; they say travel in Asia is cheap....

Anyway, enough rambling from me.

Ciao