Luke James's 2011 Mt Baw Baw Classic race report
Sunday saw the running of the tenth anniversary of the Mt Baw Baw Classic, starting in the township of Warrigal heading 100k north-east to the summit of Mt Baw Baw. A climb that is 6.6 km long with an 11% average gradient, in other words a climb with not a lot of switch backs. The weather was threatening but stayed dry for most of the race, but a flurry of snow showers at the finish line was waiting to great us.
The race started conservatively as many riders were all too aware of what lay up the road. A two man break went clear and quickly disappeared, but weren’t given much respect. 10k later saw another two men escape with one of the race favorites, things started to get a little more serious as both the two breaks were gaining large amounts of time on the peloton that was still not willing to work. Four minutes was the announced gap at the 40k mark and I decided that I needed to break my race plan of sitting in until the major climbs and do something about these breaks.
A move off the front saw me go clear with another rider 45k in and we started to work together to close these gaps. We caught the first group up the road and became a strong group of four supporting each other of Vespers hill, but still down more then 2 minutes on the lead riders. We approached a fast corner to find one of the leaders who had crashed on a small oil spill, bloodied and a little worse for where. We pushed on and we new we had just the one rider to chase now. We pulled him back to within thirty seconds over the space of 30k and we could finally see him appearing around the wet and slippery roads. As we were about the make the catch on a very fast descent my rear tire sprung a leak, which possibly spelt disaster for my race. I called up Karl from SCHNELL wheels behind who was wheel support for the day. A quick change and a push saw me chasing a large gap down a very wet descent.
I took many risk and pushed the tires to their limit in the wet. My goal was to at least have the leader insight before I started the ascent of Mt Baw Baw. I got to the base of the climb and could see the lead vehicle and rider about 200 meters up the hill. I moved myself into second position started the long process of slowly pulling the leader back metre by metre. With 3k of climbing left I finally came up along side the leader who instantly attacked and went clear. I didn’t panic and began pulling him back again. By this stage I was worried I wouldn’t survive another attack and was starting to lose some of my climbing technique. A game of cat and mouse occurred over the next 2k and with a lot of cheering and support coming from vehicles behind.
I found the strength to put one last effort in with 1k remaining to hopefully create a gap and go clear. It worked and I climbed away to take my first Open B grade win. Thanks to LSD Sports, Karl from SCHENLL Wheels and my father for supporting me on the day, couldn’t of done it without you guys. Also a very big thankyou to my coach Peter Barnett from Cycling Inform who I really wanted to get the win for today. Peter was in hospital during the race after suffering a serious bike crash the day before, this ones for you mate.
