CatA report for PR

I was thinking of calling this post "Would I be finished yet if I didn't have team mates?"... ;)

From my point of view, the A group went something like this: moderate pace for first of five laps, but 4 guys attacked and were a minute or two up the road. However when the peleton got to the gravel section the pace went ballistic. I didn't quite hang on to the lead group of 15, but right after the gravel Trev luckily paced me up to the lead 15, while the other 20 guys in the race strung out behind in some fashion - to be honest I never looked back, because turning my head took energy I didn't have to spare.

Half way through the second lap I attacked and tried to bridge up to the breakaway 4, but only made it three quarters of the way before the course turned into the wind. I foolishly/fruitlessly kept working to bridge, and got caught by the pack just as we hit the gravel. They went hammering by. I then time-trialed by myself in the wind for a lap before getting caught by a chase group containing team-mates Simon and Trev. Trev basically stopped on the start-finish hill so I could catch up (but apparently not hearing Jared's calls to wait a sec :) ), and again, he was a monster, this time for a whole lap, and left Simon and I just a couple hundred metres to make it to the next group. Simon then ground out some crazy pulls and we caught the next group, but in doing so Simon and Trev were popped.

By this point there were really only 5 guys, chasing the lead four who were way up the road. My group of five consisted of me, Scott from Rundle Mt Cycling Club, and three guys from the Bow Cycle team. Those three guys work us over pretty perfectly and cinched 5th and 6th, leaving me in 8th. Dallas, I hear, rode the entire friggen race solo and won, and Mark McDonald, Bunnin and Dan Wood worked together until the gravel descent into the finish.