Too wet to ride this weekend?
Either get yourself one of these or just relax and have a read of this!
Dirt Crits Monday 27 Nov
An Irish Handicap saw Bob Thomas take the win ahead of Dan Purcell and Shannon Rademaker. However, after a review of the results, Tom Hogan was awarded third place.
Here are the results.
And great to see so many of the local girls getting into Dirt Crits. There's always room for more!
Handicapper nails it
By le journaliste de vélo
If you were at the Delatite Hotel last Thursday evening for the road race presentations, you would have noticed the handicapper strutting around proud as punch. And so he should have, he had an absolute blinder (in a handicapping sense) for race 8 of the Mansfield Mt Buller Cycling Club (MMBCC) summer series.
The 33.5km course started at the Botanic Park, headed north out the Mansfield Whitfield road to Sawpit Gully Rd, where riders turned around and then made their way around the Barwite loop clockwise to the finish line awaiting them on Graves Rd.
As has been the trend for the season so far, participation was high with over 35 athletes pinning on a number for one of the longer road races on the MMBCC calendar.
The handicapper grouped all the riders into about 10 groups, starting with the limit riders Bella MacMunn and Deb Salatenna, down to the scratch trio in Josh ‘Juggernaut’ Hopwood, Kian Lerch-Mackinnon and Dan Purcell, who were resplendent to be seen in matching kit! Upon registering and checking out the start list, to say that the Scratch trio was just a little displeased at the record 27 minute handicap to limit and the 4 minute handicap they'd been given to the block group would be an understatement of the century. But no complaining...in the handicapper we trust.
Anyway, so the race started.
Mansfield Whitfield Road was alight with group after group soaring toward the turnaround, all the while battling a weird crosswind which plenty were struggling to work out.
There was drama at the Sawpit Gully Rd turnaround with Bella Green taking the corner just a bit hot and hitting the deck, a few minutes later Purcell almost did the same thing - but managed to just get a foot down after loosing his front tyre into the gravel.
Most groups were still together and enjoyed fast speeds thanks to now a cross tailwind on the run back toward the Barwite Road. But it was carnage once each group took the left turn onto Barwite Road itself and headed into another strong cross head wind. Anybody ‘just holding on’ went straight out the back.
Meanwhile, still dead last, and not even within sight of any other riders the Scratch trio pondered what they'd have for tea at the pub. That was until they turned onto Barwite Road and heard a yell from the marshal on the side of the road, "A minute and a half"! Working very hard into the wind along Barwite Road, this margin to the leading rider was down to about 45 seconds once the right turn was made to ascend the north side of the Coombesberg. Kian Ginger-Ninja loves a hill, and took to the north side of the Coombesberg like a duck to water which really made his fellow Scratch riders grit their teeth.
Now just a few hundred metres further up the road of Scratch, the remaining members of the block group in Mauro Brega and Tom Macmunn had swept up all that lay ahead of them and a mega group of 15-20 riders was now charging down Graves Rd with a kilometre and a half left to race. The handicapper was in this big group, and had his lungs not been burning I'm sure he would have been smiling.
Just before the Graves Road ford, Juggernaut Josh screamed to his fellow scratch riders "C'mon, we're on here!", as he proceeded to burn his very last petrol ticket to close down the final 100m to the mega group. Kian took up the lead-out and swooped up the entire mega group to deliver Purcell to the front of the race with 250m left to go. In a frantic and fast finish, Tom MacMunn showed his exceptional bike handling skills to use the slip stream and to jump from wheel to wheel to claim a really strong second place, marginally behind Purcell who held on for the win. Kian hit the line third, Brega in fourth and Damian Grundy rounded out the top five.
Massive thanks to all the volunteers who made the event possible.
What a fun race. Here are the results.
In the handicapper we trust.
And here's a little reading for over the next few damp days...
Cycling Tips on Chris Froome aiming for the Giro-Tour double
A few tips, from Cycling Tips, on mistakes to be aware of in your training. We're lucky at the MMBCC to be blessed with a couple of coaches. Contact Damian Grundy or David Heatley for more information and avoid these common mistakes.
Some advice for mountain bike suspension set-up; on compression and rebound.