Day Two in SC: here's the sun!

Today was a 3 lap/180km road race on a rolling course, with a blustery wind which always seemed to be in our faces. Starting at 8am, having lost an hour of sleep to daylight savings time, it was a little chilly, but with a clear sky the day soon warmed up; towards the end I took off my knee warmers just so that I could say I rode in shorts.

With the course not having any major difficulties, other than the blowing wind, it was hard to judge when the breaks would go away and unfortunately Joe and I missed the early move. The pack put on a decent chase for a while, but when it slowed Joe and I started attacking to get a counter move going. In the end Joe got away with one other rider and spent a full lap, 60km, chasing across the 2minute+ gap, it was impressive.




Behind, scared of missing the chasing move and incurring Joe's wrath, I covered attack after attack. Finally, we got something going and were on our way up to the front. I could definitely feel yesterday's race in the legs; the cold rain really sapped some of my energy.

With the wind blowing us about it was really important not to put out too much energy; going up the road solo wasn't an option. One of the local guys did try and stayed out for an impressively long while, but when the counter came he missed getting on their wheel and ended up drifting back to the field. Not good for his team.

30km out the attacking started in earnest on the only real climb and from there it was attack after attack. We followed and did what we could, but again it was hard to know which was the right move; the politics of local racing that we didn't understand were messing things up for us.

I made the right move with under 10km to go but could feel my legs starting to crumple. Slowly the disco lights came up and boom! I was going backwards on a full bonk. My day was done. Joe too was feeling his earlier efforts in his legs and was trying to follow wheels.

We didn't end up with a result at the finish, but both felt that we had raced a good event. With just the two of us we had been instrumental in animating the race and had really tried to race for the win. It's only the second race of the year, and at 180km was a pretty long one. This weekend should put a little extra gas in the legs. Now we just have to hope that next weekends race, Mosport, isn't cancelled as well due to bad weather...