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Saturday, June 27, 2009

Devon GP Update

It's a beautiful weekend in Devon with some great racing so far.

We started out with the Hill Climb on Friday night. I ended up taking 3rd in Cat 5 also with top Speed Theorist honours. Brutal little 750m climb. The stand up and hammer technique ended up working for me.

The ITT was this morning. Lockie took 2nd and Keith took 3rd in Cat 3 with some awesome times in a murderous westerly wind.

The Cat 5 crit just ended, which was based on points earned on two intermediate sprints and a sprint at the end for the big points. Our plan for Cat 5 with only David and I here was for David to lay the hammer down at the start to break up the race. He just turned into a beast and lead for almost three laps giving the leaders a 4 man breakaway. I owe him a beer. I ended up taking 2nd and 3rd in the intermediates and 6th on the last lap. That was good enough to get onto the podium again at 3rd place.

The Cat 3 crit was awesome! It was all Speed Theory all the time with Lockie taking first and Keith taking third. Great day for those two who are now looking for a GC win!

The Cat 5 road race was pretty eventful with David bowing out due to bronchitis or some other respiratory disease and Ale making a surprise appearance. Nothing really happened until the first KOM where Mark Franklin attacked to go for the omnium points. I countered and then held someones wheel until 300m to the line and sprinted for the line and caught and passed him right at the line take take the 3 points. Then Ale and I attacked at the second KOM and got passed by everyone at the top to take no points. But by that time 3/4 of the pack had shattered and we were on a 5 man break with one guy up the road. In the end we never caught the guy, but had good Speed Theory placings with Ale taking 3rd and me taking 7th.

Not sure how the Cat 3's did, could we get an update guys?

Also, it looks like I'll be in Cat 4 come next race....I don't know if I should be happy or scared.

Clarke

7 comments:

Dennis said...

Great job Clarke! You are so ready for Cat 4. Also congrats to the Cat 3 team of Lockie and Keith for some great teamwork in the crit.

roblukacs said...

Clarke I'm happy to have you up in Cat 4. You'll be a monster!

Thomas said...

Yeah nice work ST!

Welcome to Cat 4 Clarke

alejandro H said...

Great work by all speed theorists, wish I could have made all the races! Anyways thanks for the help in the paceline Clarke it was nice to race with you one last time!! Congrats on moving on up to cat 4!

Clarke E said...

I don't know how much I helped in that paceline, maybe gave you a little bit of a break every couple seconds. I was freaking dead from pulling way too much in the crit the night before. I'm going to have to learn to race smarter in this new category. And I 'm sure I'll see you up in cat 4 soon Ale from what I've seen.

Joel said...

Good race Clarke. See you in Cat 4 at the next race. See you soon too, Ale.

Darcy G said...

Great job, Clarke. You deserve to be in cat 4!

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