Winner! I won the Handicap A/B/C race today, 55km with 650m climbing, average speed of just under 35kmh.
The handicapper seemed fairly generous with my groups handicap time and all the groups were quite big apart from scratch who only had 3 or 4 riders. Got to ride with what you have got I guess.
It's a bit of a balancing act as I climb better than I do on the flats. I was one of the first up the CAT4 climb that was early on but made sure I stayed with the group. Then a longer CAT3, some people started shouting at the bottom about the pace, but personally I'm not going to hold back on the climb for someone I know has loads of power on the flats!
The group split up on the climb, with about 6 of us riding together dropping the guys who struggle with the climbs, then half way up another bloke and myself started to pull away. We could see the group in front of us who were virtual leaders on the road at that point which helped spur us on a bit. We caught them just before the crest of the climb, good to take a breather on the way down then.
I started having chest pains after going over the top, but thought "she'll be right" in the true Aussie way, and sure enough, after 10 minutes of hurting it passed! We got to the turn around which normally marks the point where people start to hammer it, the 4-5 guys from our the group which we dropped on the climb caught us now. The leading group was a bit inexperienced and wasn't working together very well. I realised that the 4-6 from my original group were going to catch us so sat up a little bit not wanting to work too hard.
Going back the pace was quite good, but with a mix of abilities some people would pull a turn then slow right up, it got a bit dangerous, the commissionaire spoke to everyone after the race. Apparently a few riders crossed the centre of the road, there was quite a bit of surging and not much rhythm. I was riding towards the front of the bunch in case it split going over a few pinches so didn't really see much of it. I did notice people not pulling a turn and just sitting on which is annoying, but not much you can do about that.
Anyway, we all stayed away from B grade who started 6.5 minutes after us and the scratch group were 12.5 I think! Came down to a sprint finish, there was a bit of bumping and barging before we got towards the line. I was about 7th wheel coming into the last corner, one guy was popped and sat up straight away, then most guys went to the right. I stayed sitting (I've found if I stand I end up with loads of wind resistance from being tall, and I risk causing my legs to cramp up), hooked in behind them and built up a decent cadence, then flew past on the left perfectly, held it off for the last 20m or so to the line to take the win!
The bad news is that I have now been promoted so will be racing B grade from now onwards...... I won't be winning anything for a while, just struggling to hang on!
