the weekend
im in helping gareth out since hes away and people still want to get their altitude training in before they head off to work, so here i am. i havnt had a coffee yet or anything to eat. it was one of those auto pilot mornings where i just got out of bed pulled the clothes on and got in the truck-which must have driven itself here as i cant remember doing it, and here i am.
across from performo is the pro fitness gym, which actually had people queing outside it at ten to 6!!! i dont think ive ever been to the gym that early ever!!! the people look rather awake as well, we have a massive glass walls in here so can see straight into the gym, and people are already pounding out the kms on the treadmills, which is something ive never understood at all. if you want to go for a run-why would you pay somebody to go run on their treadmill when chch is rather blessed with places to run?? anyways onto the weekend.
we had the armstrong prestige races this weekend, something ive never done before-last year i missed it as i had chappys wedding on(which still ranks up there for the top wedding ive been too)
saturdays race was round the long bays, a pretty standard training ride normally round here. there were apparently 1500 people on the start line which is awesome. it was pretty hairy though, lots of people ive never seen before battling like crazy to get in behind the car in the neutral section!
we headed out of town and round the flat for the first 40km and try as hard as i might i couldnt get away. i was actually feeling bloody good which was a big change from the rest of the week, where i had to take a trip to the doctors at QE2 to make sure i didnt have anything going on, as i had caught a major case of creepitis.
we hit the bottom of gebbies pass and that was that, probably the fastest ive climbed it for a while bit with 1000 on the line and 250 for first to the top of the hill i was never going to make it, so settled into a good group and rolled along to the finish, a happy wee camper as my legs were back to where i thought they should be.
that night me, heath, logan and sharon rolled down to mighty timaru, (home of legendary stuntman dick johansonson)
for cory williams 30th party. and well, i got a wee bit untidy, and felt alot worse for wear the next morning when i woke up at collys place, for the mandatory instant coffee and tried to patch myself up with a bit of food but no avail.
we got back into town about an hour before the crit started, got changed at the flat, had another coffee, and rolled into town.
all in all i had about 5min of warm up, which consisted of riding round at 25kph trying to remove what felt like an axe in the back of my head.
there were 50 guys on the start line in the elite-a few more than apparently whats on the line next week at crit nats, but hey ho. the race start really aggresively with people firing off attacks everywhich way. i was just trying to stay up the front and out of trouble and not spew, and soon enough the field whittled down to about 20 guys or so.
with about 20min to go a group of 5 of us got away, including jeremy yates, cleatus, oddy, and jo chapman.
in the last 10min it was announced we were sprinting for a crowd prime, and looking by the size of the crowd it was going to be big. i hit into the last hairpin in second place about to give it big booftas, and bang, down went cleatus. he was the first one into the corner and down he went, with me and jo chappy straight over him. left yates a pretty easy run to get the prime (which was massive-i saw the bucket of cash at the finish)
we rolled into the pits and got our bikes all fluffed up and back out into it. when we got back josh england from subway had bridged over which made it interesting, they tried one-two’ing it a bit but it stayed together until jeremy put a massive attack in with about 3 laps to go, i bridged over to him and didnt really want to roll it too hard as i was pretty gassed from getting there and it all came back together with one to go. heading into the last hairpin jeremy was leading, i managed to get in between him and josh and hit the hairpin and me and josh took off, it was a long sprint so i rode most of the sprint seated as it was quite twisty and tight to the line, hit the straight and pulled up beside josh and rolled him which was nice, first win for a wee while so cant complain!
went out for a nice feed with the fullas after it, the subway boys were having a party but with a late night the night before and an early start this morning i just headed home after dinner and watched some family guy and relaxed, definately feeling it was the right option this morning when i woke up and my breath didnt catch fire when i walked past naked flame haha
