Oh wow, that was a hard
day in the saddle. The day started slowly with a 10 o'clock race
start. As we were riding down the Pacific Hwy under neutral no cars were
allowed to stop to service riders therefore the race was stopped so everyone
was able to start together.
As the race restarted I
moved straight to the front hoping for a break to go away, after 10km of
attacking and being bought back I started to feel like I was struggling so I
made the conscious decision to move to the back and relax. As this is my first
tour I decided to make sure that I actually finish. After around 30km there was
shouting and screeching I looked up the road and headed for the grass, a
motorbike that was trying to move through to the front of the peloton had
apparently stalled collecting a few riders before falling over and taking down
even more. I followed the wheel of William Walker through the thick grass and
back on to the road to begin chasing the front group back. Soon after the race
was neutralised so that everyone was able to rejoin the peloton. For around
10km the race rolled through town after town with people parked on the side of
the road taking photos as we passed by. Up and over the KOM was very quick the
pace was touching on 30kph as we climbed up and over the hill towards the turn
around. The pace seemed to steady as the road flattened out sitting on close to
45kph until we headed back over the KOM in the reverse direction. Second time
over the KOM was in fact the steeper side yet the pace was no different. With a
break of twelve establishing themselves over the top of the climb and that was
the break for the day. As we descended towards the finishing climb the peloton
stretched into a single file and just try to hold on. The road started to climb
skywards and everyone started to slow. As this sort of terrain isn't really my
cup of tea I decided to back off and climb a steady tempo to the top. This in
turn played into my favour, towards the end of the climb I found myself
creeping past person after person. As I reached the top I put in just a little
dig to get myself past another four riders, overall it may not seem like much
but it is a small person win.
All in all the first day
of racing of my first NRS tour was a seriously hard day. Time to recover and
get ready for the next three days of racing.
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