Melbourne to Ballarat race report

Melbourne to Ballarat is one of the classic handicap road races on the Victoria cycling calendar. Here is the race report from Rod Hill.

It was a good day for me...Melb to Ballarat is 94km and we rode along the Western fwy/hwy with police escorts controlling traffic. We had the left hand lane all to ourselves.

http://www.cyclingprofiles.com.au/HTM/CSV2011/CV_MelBall2011.htm

I was off limit (27min group). I started with 18 others, mostly males but probably 8 females and got straight into it....Steamed to the base of Pentland Hills just outside Bacchus Marsh where the climbing started, approx 26km after the start. It was a long steady climb around 4% and we started to lose riders, point 2 on the map. By the top of this first sect of climbing there was only 6 of us so we continued on working well as a group.

For the next 30 odd km’s we climbed steadily with a short sharp climb at Pykes creek, point 5 on the profile map. A NNW 10kph cross wind was evident during this section (we were heading in a WWN direction) which made the efforts hard pulling thru to the front of 6 man group. We had one guy who sat out on many turns but generally we all worked. Two of the riders were stronger but waited at the top of the climbs as they knew they needed all 6 of us to have any chance.

About 100 metres from Gordon (60km into the race), and the highest point of the race, we were caught by the 15, 18, 21 and 24 min groups so it was massive group. The race now flipped from having to work really hard to sitting in a huge peleton steaming along between 45 – 50kph. It is the first time I have experienced a really serious pack of riders riding at pace. So there was lots of jostling for wheels and position. The sound was incredible with the hum of carbon wheels and the squeals of brake pads on carbon rims.A huge pothole caused a reverberation through the pack but luckily I was just to the side of it. I worked at staying in the top 20 – 30 positions and out of the wind. Before long we were on the ring road going around the back of Ballarat. There was another short sharp climb, point 7 on the course profile, were the pace kicked up but having cover it didn’t nearly seem so bad.

We turned off the freeway into a southerly direction so now had a slight tail wind. The pace kicked up but I worked hard to stay near the front. There were some attacks but no one was going to let them get away. I was surprised that the pace didn’t go nuts and was on the lookout for any riders with low numbers (scratch riders) moving to the front, but they never came, lucky for us...!!!

We went through a couple of roundabouts which was interesting at pace with riders all around and controlled intersections (through red lights) by the police. Then we hit a sharp left hander out of the blue which caused some disruption to the pack, luckily I was on the inside line and stayed out of trouble but there must have been a few riders taken down judging by the yells and sounds of bikes clashing. After another short distance we hit another sharpish left hander. We were now on Lk Wendouree and then all of a sudden there was a 500m to go sign. I put in an effort to try and tack onto a rider in front of me.

I crossed the line finishing 37th of 204, 11 seconds behind the overall winner.

Avg 37.4kph for the ride...we were blessed though with the weather which was probably why the scratch riders weren’t able to catch us

cheers
Rod