Woah my legs hurt!

So after a few weeks now of sickness I am starting to get back to form. I have absolutely smashed my legs this weekend with 115km on the bike yesterday, followed by a 3km road run race, which I won, even after going the wrong way! This meant that I came away with an extremely slow time but I am still happy that I was able to get the win because in the last 1500m, I was in third place with a substantial gap between the two leaders and myself. I just had enough strength and determination to claw my way back to second place and from there I felt even stronger and was able to run myself into the lead position with a few hundred metres to go.

This morning I raced in the first of the Cairns Cycling Club criterium races. It was my second race in A grade and the field was very small with of only five riders. My only goal for the race was to stay with the main group and not get dropped. Fortunately for me the older riders were nice enough in backing the pace off for me when I dropped on the first occasion.

The field split dramatically, early on, and there was only three riders left which included myself. Paul Mashford, arguably the fastest man on a bike in Cairns, surged a number of times to weaken me and the only other rider, Brett. Mashford’s final acceleration led him to success and this left Brett and myself in a frantic chase to get back on to his wheel. Brett, who put down an explosive surge, left me dangling off the back where I found myself alone. I lapped one of the riders who had dropped off earlier and he jumped on my wheel. As I came up to closing the gap on Brett, who had fifteen metres on me at the time, I hit the U-turn too fast and tried to pedal too early which caused my inside pedal to hit the ground, this caused me to wobble and all I could think of was my last crash, so I directed my bike to the gutter where I was safely able to land on the grass. I got back up and Damian the rider who had been dropped helped me back onto my bike paced me to a third place finish.

I couldn’t have asked for anymore out of this race. It was a fantastic way at gaining some more experience in the A grade field and despite my little mishap, I finished the race in a strong position. I think that I am strong but not strong enough and now that my flu has gone, I am able to start putting in some worthwhile kilometres.

Working hard or hardly working...three laps to go!