R4

The R4 is a 100km race from Rotorua to Whakatane and its a race I have never done but had heard good and bad things, so I wanted to check it out as I have done alot of training on the course.

The race started out rather slowly as the neutral section rolled into the race course without any change in pace, I think the heavy clouds over head had a lot of people feeling a bit negative. It didn't start to rain about 20kms in which further emphasised just how many muppets were in the race as the bike handling skills were atrocious, and coming from me that is saying something.

The paccours are made up of rollers until half way where there is a 5km climb and then a 10km twisty decent and then flat into the finish. I made it over the climb without too many difficulties, well thats a bit of a lie as I was in the box, but I still was in the wheels of the front group which for me means a lack of difficulty. I sanbagged the decent as in the rain I was more interested in keeping on 2 wheels. At the Bottom I was in group 3 with 7 guys up the road and a group in the middle, so when the road levelled off I rode across to the second group and watched them try and organise a chase.

The 7 out front slowly came back and broke up a bit so with 15km to go there were 3 guys at 30 seconds, so when the chase lost a little momentum I took the opportunity to ride across to them...lonewolf. I made contact but they were pretty stuffed so ended up pulling them a bit til we got to the outskirts of town where I had to leave them and press on solo. This wee move come unstuck about 3km from home...still too weak to make this kind of move stick.

The last 2km had 6 roundabouts, half of which had cars banked up, 2 sharp left handers into on coming traffic and the best bit was with 500m to go the road covered in cones directing us left when we could see the finish line ahead...all this in the pouring rain. Needless to say it was a sktechy sprint with too many muppets taking silly risks to try and move from 7th to 8th, so I rolled in at the back of the front group. Probably the most dangerous last couple of kms I have done on a bike.