Held each year just before the Hell of the North, Paris-Roubaix, this race nonetheless bears little resemblance to that famous race. It’s a 60km race over lumpy terrain just south of Hobart, Tasmania, and has no cobbles.

 

I had not planned to do this race. I had looked wistfully at the weather forecast and then my wife surprised me by encouraging me to go. Bear in mind that we have a one month old little boy, and so sleep, fitness and all the usual things necessary for riding competitively were somewhat out the door, and so it was a big gift from my wife for me to go and ride.

Still, I did jump at the chance to ride. My last race had been about a year ago, and I had really enjoyed it. I figured I’d struggle today but decided to go along, give it a crack, and just make the most of the opportunity.

The weather was grand: warm, a light breeze, and overcast meant dry roads and a pleasurable ride whatever happened. It also meant there would be a decent turnout, and we had nearly 20 starters in B Grade. I chose to ride B Grade, mostly because my mates would never let me live it down if I sandbagged in a lower grade!

Being a scratch race, A were off first, followed by the lower grades, one after another. B set off in a somewhat haphazard manner, at a pace that was more reminiscent of an afternoon amble to the pub than a race. Not that I was complaining…

C grade proved just how somnolent that pace really was when they roared past us and made the whole grade feel deeply ashamed of their lacklustre efforts thus far. B grade subsequently made up for this by surging back past C.

However C Grade were not done yet. They came back past B Grade and their efforts were probably solely responsible for a respectable pace in the bunch up the first real climb.  Barry rode off the front a little up the climb, but we all knew he wasn’t silly enough to try and solo the entire race, so no one panicked.

At this point, my legs were a little heavy but I was doing fine. Dogga and I had been a little silly on Thursday with a well-over-threshold attack up the lower slopes of Strickland Ave, and while I suffered somewhat from this, I think he suffered more!

The next 40 or so kilometres proved to be all over the show. A dog’s breakfast. A shambles.  A few half-hearted attempts to setup a pace line were tried, and some even more half-hearted attacks followed, but mostly it was just surge followed by soft pedal!

Once through Kettering, the pace started to hot up a bit. A 1.2km climb at 6% sorted out the candidates from the pretenders. Me, a pretender for sure as I watched the bunch get 5 seconds — doesn’t seem like much, but was enough to make it very hard indeed to get back on. Through the turn onto the Nichol’s Rivulet climb, just a few seconds off the back and I could feel my legs telling me “enough”. I struggled to rejoin the bunch but never really made it back.

I plodded up the final climb, with a few other riders ahead and just out of reach.  Over the top and decided that I would give it all I had on the descent and flat run into the line — not that I’d catch the leaders, but at least I could be somewhat satisfied with the day’s efforts!

I managed to catch Sam, but Brendon and one other rider remained tantalisingly out of reach.  Adam (congratulations, I understand, are in order), Joe, Mark, Barry, Jonathon, James, Mike and others were even further up the road!

After this appalling debacle, I expect the Strava team will want their Ambassador Kit back 😉  It seems that the great Velo Flow website is currently down, so we can’t relive the race in all its glory at present, but hopefully it will be back soon!  Update: Velo Flow is back!  Replay the race.  You can easily spot Gerald (overall A Grade winner), and the mysterious flying Torben, and Dogga.  I am represented by the bigger blue dot…