RIDE REPORT - ATTA 2 OCTOBER 43km course.
So I sat at my computer at 530am this morning look at the BOM weather
map and deciding weather I should head up to Calga this morning... It
wasn't looking good - radar was a big blob of red so it was raining hard,
and the wind thing said the wind gusts were up to 50km/hr at Mangrove
Mt. But I had gone to the trouble to wake up and I had packed my stuff
last night so I thought 'its never as bad as it looks', so I did the drive and
did my first Calga race.
It wasn't too windy when I was warming up, but it was cold and raining
hard. The rain eased off while I was on the first 10-15kms or so, but by the
time I got to the Wiseman's Ferry Rd turnoff it started raining really hard,
and I was getting blown around the road a fair bit.. I wasn't feeling too safe
at speed so I eased off the gas down that big hill to the turn-around. I was
actually feeling really good and wasn't feeling fatigued , I'm not sure of my
time at the turn but was averaging 38km/hr which I was happy with in those
conditions. I was feeling really good on the way back - did the hill up to
Wiseman's Ferry Rd but as I got to the top all of a suddent it just POURED!!
It was windy, I could hardly see the rain was so hard, water was flowing across
the road and I felt like it was all a little out of control and getting really dangerous
being in those conditions on an open road (in my opinion), so I got out of the
aero-bars and really eased up. Pretty dissapointed because I was feeling
really good and it felt mostly downhill on the way back - I get the feeling
you could really hammer those last 8-10kms. I should have gone out quite a
bit harder too, I think I was a bit nervous about my fitness. Anyways, next
time.... My final time was 1:11.
It was lots of fun though and really good experience. Really looking forward
to having another go when the conditions are good. If you haven't done it
before I really recomend it - great fun starting out of the little booth, the
course is nice, very few cars (and they have lots of time and space to get
around you so I think its very safe) and fun to ride [well it would be
usually
]. And note to self - need a longer warm-up when it's cold like that!
I think a good 45-60mins would have been good to get the legs going, I
only felt like I was getting wound up at about the turn around point.
Wow, long post... sorry for boring you all to death....