the new year

A new year always brings a a chance to reevaluate things especially around how your riding is going and what you want to achieve in the new year, that's another post though. It also gives you a great chance to catch up with family and friends and sit in the sun enjoying their company catching up on time you missed out on during the year. I had a great break and really reminded me why NZ rocks.

The racing so far....
Round the mountain classic
This is always a good chance to race in front of the family in Taranaki on a pretty good course. I was racing really patiently until i saw there was alot of heavy breathing on a climb with 55km to go. I chucked one into the group trying to get 3 or 4 away but no one else wanted to play ball so i tried to ride all the way home into a headwind...not a great idea and got caught 10km from home. To win the sprint in this race you have to go through a roundabout and 2 big judder bars and a gate, all within 200 meters from the line. Not my idea of fun so it was attack fest trying to steal it but it all come back together from a kick, so i watched.

National TT Champs
I was looking forward to this race but things just didn't really click. I felt good but didn't have that last little bit of top end, I was never going to win or even medal but thought i was going to go better than 13th. I probably didn't help my cause much by not touching the tt bike for 2weeks leading into it but sometimes you can't control those kind of things.

National RR Champs
What a stinking hot day, 30degrees and starting at midday always meant it was going to be a tough day. My plan for the day was to ride position for as long as i could and see how i would fare on the climbs. The plan was going good and i was doing my best impression of a human bollard until half distance. With the break out over 6 minutes everyone decided to drive it into the bottom of the climb so i couldn't get great position. I made it to the top of the climb where i made a bit of a blue, someone went on the attack through the feed and I chose to go for my bottle and never made it back.
I wasn't too fussed how it all went as i didn't think i had any climbing legs. So now its off to the hawkes bay for the 3 day tour which should give me some good racing leading into the wellington tour.