Back on two wheels

After a 4 week taper, I finally went for a ride on Saturday and did the ACT Hill Climb Championships at Corin. Dave, Nath, Tamas and myself all rolled out there early to find that we were going to be in the last group of riders to start. On the ride out there I felt fine, but I was getting Short of breath on the climbs, but my legs weren't getting sore. I started 30 seconds after Tamas and made it my goal to catch him, which I thought was a good and probably achievable goal as I'm usually a better climber than him. The undulations at the start made it hard to find a rhythm, and made him look a lot closer than he was, but by about half way when the real climbing had started, I caught him. I was under the impression that once the top of the climb was reached, there was just one pinch before rolling down to Corin Forest where the finish line was (you would think for a HC they could actually have a proper hill top finish), but there were about 3 pinches before Corin Forest, and then we had to keep riding along the flat road before the final pinch to the highest point on the road. On the final part of the actual climb I smashed myself and then gave it everything up the final pinch, but I' had it after that and couldn't smash myself on the flat bit to the finish. But after all that, I won in under 19s which I was pretty happy about. It ended up being a big day and a very nice ride, and I was just ahppy that I made home not feeling too bad after such a long break.

Last night saw my return to the CCC summer crit races. I was pretty tired and feeling a bit dead, so I had no high expectations. I was riding a lot smarter than I have before, but the race was just ridiculous. right from the start it was absolute chaos, people passing on the inside in the middle of a corner, intense speeds and constant attacks, I saw one guy about 4m in front of me get cut off by a girl he was pulling to the front and had to brake so hard that his back wheel was sliding out. I had a pretty good crack, but I had to pull out with about 3 or 4 laps to go.

I'm looking forward to doing some big rides now that school has finished, Cameron (another XC rider on the ACTAS talent development program) wants to have a crack at honeysuckle and Im going to attempt the Boboyan Road return, as well as Williasmdale? and the Murrembateman, Gundaroo, Sutton return. If I can do these three rides, I will complete my goal of riding every rural road in the Canberra region this year.