Me nearing the summit of the Mt Hotham ascent
The first weekend in December each year sees the running of the Tour of Bright stage race. It is a great tour taking in some terrific riding in the Victorian high country and is always good training for the upcoming mountain bike season.
The first stage was the "gaps loop", a 150km road stage over Rosewhite Gap, up to Bogong village and then over Tawonga Gap back to Bright....a solid day out. As predicted the early break got away in the first kilometres, and a couple of others snuck away on the other side of Rosewhite. I wasn't keen to do get away myself, as it was a long way from the finish and most of the guys that I thought were worth marking, were still in the peloton. Unfortunately it seemed that these guys must have all had teammates in the breaks because the atmosphere soon turned negative and no one was keen to do any work. It was so slow at one stage in fact, that when i decided to take a wee, i actually gapped to bunch while freewheeling down a hill with my willy out! Rather annoyed by this obvious indication that the peloton was creeping, I just decided to keep going on my own. I rode the 10kms into Mt Beauty solo and all the way up to the Cranky Charly hairpin (about 5km of climbing) before they caught me. The group then stayed more or less together until the bottom of Tawonga Gap when it all blew apart. I wasn't feeling great by this stage so I was happy to find my buddy, Adrian Jackson, to pace me over the top. We ended up finishing in a group of 8, a rather unimpressive 16 minutes off the pace.
The 16km time trial that afternoon was a pretty tall order. I didn't really give it a good crack and lost a bit more time, but my thoughts were already on Sunday's final stage up Mt Hotham.
The 3rd and final stage would take us from Bright, up the valley road to Harrietville, and then up the formidable ascent of Mt Hotham to a mountain top finish. The stage is only 58km, but it is tough with the big climb lasting for about 30kms. The pace on the flat valley roads was fast and despite being worried that a split in the bunch could result in big time losses, I found myself sitting in the back of the bunch for most of the time. As soon as we hit the climb, Lachy Norris launched one off the front. I don't think anyone even thought about going with him because he was moving so fast that he had disappeared out of sight after only a couple of corners and wasn't caught until very late in the stage. For me, I just tried to settle into a rhythm. I didn't quite feel comfortable but I tried to position myself near the front for the first big test, "the Meg", a 400m section of 9% at 5km into the climb. The bunch often splits here so by moving up a little I gave my self a bit of a buffer to getting dropped. It worked pretty well because despite dropping back quite a lot and a gap forming in front of me, I was able to regain contact and stay with the main group all the way to the tree line....all be it somewhat a yo-yo dangling off the back. When I was unloaded with about 10kms to go I tried to keep pushing. By the summit I had lost about 4 minutes to the winner, but i was pretty happy with my sensations and my position of 28th on the stage.
Overall it was a nice weekend in the mountains with great weather and some solid racing. I am feeling good about where I am at for this time of year and I am certainly looking forward to the 1st round of the National Mountain Bike Series next weekend in Hobart.
