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Tue, 09 May 2006

Simon Clarinbolds's Story from the Australian National Masters Road Titles - 10:14

Hi Folks, Tony asked me what happened on Sunday:
Thought I'd put a few lines down about the Men's Masters 4 category road race on Sunday. We started with a field of about 65 riders, a lot of the big names were there, all the riders that had dominated the track races and the first 2 road events. As team riders Mark Harris and I had a chat about launching alternate attacks and which riders to watch. Last years winner, Steve Darracott, was heavily marked. The course consisted of 7 laps of a fairly undulating circuit, some of the roads were quite bumpy, and there was little through traffic. The race started at a reasonable pace until we got to the first hill where there was attack after attack, all being covered pretty much by the front runners. I tried to get away a couple of times and was chased down, then about 5 riders got away including Mark who bridged across. Big Steve Darracott was in the break of 5. I tied to quickly get over but didn't have the legs and was stuck in no mans land for about 5 k's.
Eventually the bunch caught up to me, I was thinking that I'd, yet again, missed the winning break and good luck to Mark - if the break stuck he might be sprinting for his second gold medal of the weekend. Much to my surprise though, about 5 kilometres later, the break just sat up, and was quickly swollowed up by the bunch. The surprising counter attack that followed floored everyone. Mark attacked again and managed to get a really good break. There were a few panicked chasers but nothing really effective, I just sat on and watched. Mark spend an entire lap out by himself.
At the same place on the next lap, that part of the course was on a long slow rise into a block headwind, Mark was caught. I launched a counter attach with another rider in an orange coloured outfit (as opposed to an outfit from Orange CC). The two of us worked well, I noticed another, thankfully lone, rider bridging accross to us. So we had three away. Orange did one huge turn, after I did my next turn the new guy, from Tamworth CC named 'Bags', did a turn, the orange guy had cracked, there were two of us left with 4 and a half 12.9k laps to go. Bags and I just kept working at a very high rate, the laps seemed to tick down, the commissare kept telling us what the break was, 35, 55, a minute, 55, 52, then it jumped to a minute 15. We held around a minute until, with 2 laps to go we were informed a chasing pair was 35 seconds behind, then the bunch was another 30 seconds back. I was pretty sure the strong man of the series, Craig Taylor, would be one of the chasers, so Bags and I did some really hard turns to respond, on one of the false downhills I had the speed over 60kmh for what seemed a kilometer or 2.
With 5 k's to go we were told the break was 32 seconds behind and the bunch had disintergrated. I had a few thoughts about how to win V coming second. In the end we rode tempo up the hill leading to the fairly flat and short finish. Bags led the way, then clicked down a couple of gears and jumped for the line at the 200 metre mark. I tried to respond and got quite a shock just how quick Bags was. I think I may have got a bit of an overlap, but he had the win and I was left thinking I should have gone at the 3k to go sign. Still, at least I came away with something. Craig Taylor dumped his break partner, I suspect where I should have gone (or at least tried), and came in for 3rd.
Steve Darracott came in with the bunch. I was told later by one of his club mates (Ian Lovell) that Steve, to his credit, decided that he was so marked he'd just sit at the back an see what happened. Anyway, to say I was pleased to be able to come away from the champs with something is an understatment. Regards,
Simon C.
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