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Comments: We rode together as a group probably until about Mordialloc and then Jon and I moved on ahead. The southerly headwind was very strong along the exposed roads by the beach and despite our best efforts to hide ourselves at the back of packs of riders somehow Jon and I kept ending up at the front of the group and towing along a rather large "freight train". This was not what we had planned! :) We were the ones who were supposed to be sheltering behind others not the other way round! The overall pace heading south and into the wind was around 24 km an hour which is awfully slow when compared to our normal times over this course. There were showers moving across the course at varying stages but it wasn't until we were just leaving the Sorrento rest stop that a shower of rain actually caught us. We had expected that it would be a short lived shower but it continued to get heavier and lasted for a full 50 minutes during which time we got absolutely soaked to the skin and it was cold so the whole experience was very unpleasant! The rain was so heavy at times that visibility through rain affected glasses and amongst the spray off the wheels of cyclists in front was minimal. I was very happy with how I attacked Balcombe Hill - so much so that had to wait for seven minutes at the top of Jon to rejoin me. By now the rain was lightening off and apart from another brief shower to towards Frankston the weather seemed to be improving. Certainly the biggest improvement was that the way home from Sorrento was with the fairly strong southerly now acting as a tailwind. We stopped at Frankston to remove our rain jackets as the sun had finally broken through the clouds. In fact this morning as I look at my arms I have the classic cycling shirt mark and also the very attractive "half forehead height" tanline that appears between the top of your glasses and is bottom of the race helmet. What a great look! My legs were surprisingly good for the latter part of the trip back to Docklands. Again - and in the same refrain as my marathon run just last Sunday - I was very pleased at how I went given my lack of distance training. My longest ride before this race was only 67 km (i.e. about one third race distance). What would you do differently?: Do some longer endurance rides.  Post race
Warm down: Couldn't find a beer! Had to settle for a coffee instead which was good to help warm up a bit. Real "warm down" starts Monday night when we head to Hong Kong for a break! :) What limited your ability to perform faster: Training. Event comments: Great race, better organisation and the lunch food was much improved on past years. Finish on the waterfront at Docklands was great. Last updated: 2006-06-20 12:00 AM
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Australia
Bicycle Victoria
13C / 55F
Precipitation
Overall Rank = /14722
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Up at 4:30 a.m. Looked out the window and could see that the trees were bending in a fairly strong wind. :-( This is not what was forecast! Forecast was for a very light southerly breeze and a few, if any, isolated showers. While it wasn't raining the wind was certainly very stiff and as the course is essentially an out and back north to south one it was clear that the first four hours of the race would be into a strong headwind.
Had the obligatory Milo smoothie and a piece of toast, dressed and put the bikes on the back of the car and headed off to Port Melbourne which was where our small group of five riders was going to meet. The official race start was at Docklands but there is such poor parking around that area and with 15,000 competitors we elected to start about 4km away from there.
Nothing!