Grape Ride 2012

The week following my 4^th place in the Waikari Classic was the Grape Ride, So me and Caz made our annual trip north to Blenheim for the race on the Friday night and picked up our race packs. We caught up with our friends, JM and RJ who we had convinced to join us for the weekend’s racing. JM and I had half a jug on the outcome.

Another early Saturday start. We arrived well in time for an 8:30 start and found lots of keen roadies had been lining up since 7:45 to start close to the front of the peloton. I started with John (who I race with a bit) towards the back of the sub three hour group. When we got away in our bunch, I quickly made it clear that I was not going to settle in with a sedate bunch by charging away out of my seat at 50km/h in the run down towards Blenheim. John joined in and we were joined by three or four other riders. My lungs burned as we charged past a number of bunches ahead of us and then some very big bunches beyond Blenheim.

Following state highway one to Picton, we did not let the pace slow and two or three of us would just cycle past some of the big bunches, leaving them to ride as a group. We hit the hills keeping pace with Steve Gurney, dropped into Picton and then climbed up again into Queen Charlotte Drive. At the top of this, my self-preservation instincts kicked in again and I took it slower down the descents and lost a number of places. This was despite having improved my descending over the last few months!

Into the headwind towards Linkwater I lead a small bunch, working hard with John to try and close the gap with a larger bunch ahead of us. This was ultimately unsuccessful and we carried on in our bunch while collecting a few others. I caught my breath for twenty minutes or so sitting in, as we went through Havelock and back to Renwick. I then started to try and work out time and speed combinations to what sort of time  I was going to do.

At this stage, I decided that I was going to have to average over 41km/h for the last section to go under three hours. I pushed on to the front of the bunch and broke away a couple of times, joined by a few others including John. We took turns leading at the front and were joined by three tandems who were racing for places. They were great to draft behind when we were out of breath. We charged into Renwick and finished in 2 hours 48 minutes, well under three hours which goes to show that my calculations were a bit out. I managed to reduce my time from 2011 (3 hours 6 minutes) by a substantial 18 minutes.

Caz came well up in the stakes in the 43km race beating her time from last year and RJ finished about twenty minutes behind her.  JM finished an hour after me in the 101km race.