National Club Championships

National club champs took place last week and it turned out to be some very good racing with a lot of local Nelson riders doing very well.

My race was on Friday at Midday and strait away attacks went down and i managed ride across to another group of riders that had a couple of strong guys in there. We still had 1min 30 to the 3 leaders on the road so we knuckled down and got on with the chase we had been reducing the gap when we heard from the side of the road t sit up and wait foe 3 more guys to come across and help with the work load. Once the catch was made on the front guys it was back to square one and a few guys thought it was time to have a rest. (which wasn't really that pleasing when they ended up getting in the medals!!) but thats their decision. A few of the break away dropped off over the next few laps until it was left to 6 riders in the lead group and when the attacks started to go on the last lap all the other laps started to hit me and i had no venom in the legs on the final climb. so ended up 5th.

Just got back from the Yunca junior tour of southland. i am pleased to be back because the riding conditions in southland are less than ideal. Any way i got 6th overall in the u19 and was felling really good the whole tour with the wind, rain, hail and some snow maybe.

The tour panned out like this.

Day 1 was just a prologue where i got 10th which i was pleased with because i haven't been doing any thing like that. next day was to stages both around 80 km long i broke away in stage 1 to get some time back but got caught with probably only 15km to go so was pretty gutted.

next stage more bad weather hit and i was survival mode with a few attacks nothing stuck because conditions where so bad. so i rolled in with bunch time.

Day 3

was the crit early in the morning and i sat in the bunch and rested up and then with a couple of minutes to go rode off the front and took the stage.

in the afternoon was another 80km stage and i attacked soon after the start and got a good gap then a couple of riders came across and just after the first hill climb Michael Vink and Tom Hubbard came across from the peleton and this was when i thought we where away and this would move me up on GC but some how the bunch caught us after some dodgey bunch motor pacing and things like that!! but i don't know the full story so can't real say much.

So all in all a good warm up to the real thing in november!

i would like to quickly thank Village Cycles for sorting out my bike and Chris Nichlson for all the advice and Hugh Macmillian for all the help down south cheers.