One down, one to go.
With the previous race starting at 12:10 and only lasting 7 minutes, I had a ~13 minute gap between Stage 5a and 5b.
I used 8 minutes or so to spin around Mech Island loop for a second time, and then parked myself in the Downtown Watopia starting pens ready for the longer of today’s two rides.
Things started fine on this one. The race off the start line was as fast paced as ever – I’d argue faster paced than on Stage 5a, but within less than a kilometre it had settled down to a fairly relaxed pace. I guess I wasn’t the only one feeling it in the legs.
We pottered along as a large group for a good 4km, with only one attack coming around the time of the climb out of the water tunnel. I don’t know who that was, but they got reined back in shortly around the climb out of the fishing village.
From there, things settled down again for another 4km or so, taking in the Bridge sprint without anyone making a push.
But once we hit the bottom of the Esses Ramp it was game over. At least, for me.
I completely misjudged this, my effort way below where it needed to be, and by the time I realised what had happened I was already too far back to have any chance of getting back on.
Ahh well, sometimes you win, and sometimes you get dropped.
What I will say is that with the trainer difficulty down around the 15-20% mark, I did considerably better on those final roller coaster bumps than I usually do. So much so actually that I made up a few places on that section where I’d definitely normally fall behind.
From there it was a scramble to the finish line. Initially there was only a small group of 2 other riders and myself, but we got caught up by another group of 2, and with less than 200m to go the lot of them put in a last ditch effort to the line.
Sadly, I didn’t have anything left as I’d ramped myself hard in the final kilometre. Fortunately there was a big enough gap to the next group that I didn’t lose more places.
Anyway, that was me. Back to racing. Tiring, for sure. Glad it’s a rest day tomorrow. Then it’s over to Scotland, and after that, looking ahead to whatever February’s race series brings.
