Unigames Part I: Road Race

Last night I got home from a week in Melbourne for the Unigames. The Unigames is an Australia-wide competition for uni students to compete against each other in their sport of choice, and more importantly, to get really pissed every night. The reason that Lawn Bowls is part of the Unigames program becomes clear when you consider that last point.

I made my way over to ride for Adelaide Uni in the cycling events, namely the road race, individual time trial (TT) and the criterium. There was also a pairs TT, but I had no-one to do it with. Although another Adelaide Uni student was coming over for the individual TT, he wasn't keen to do the pairs. I was happy with this, as the pairs was the day before the individual, so I could save my legs!

I arrived in Melbourne on Sunday morning, after a flight spent praying that the baggage handlers would be kind to my race bike, which was stuffed into a cardboard box somewhere in the cargo hold. Of course, the bike was fine. This was the first time I have travelled with a bike, and I suspect next time I might be laying out for a proper soft case or hard case. Lugging a cardboard bike box around the airport and on and off various buses is not fun, kids.

Anyway. To the race. The road race was on Monday, so I had a quiet evening on Sunday with plenty of pasta consumption and no drinking of beer. Lawn bowls can be done hungover... racing a bike 120km, not so much. At least not for this wussy boy.

The road race was at Lancefield, a small country town about 100 klicks north of Melbourne. On the agenda was 4 laps of a 30km circuit for the guys, and 3 laps of the same for the girls. Except that before the start the girls managed to convince them to drop it down to 2 laps. A few of us guys launched a last minute bid to have our race shortened as well, but sadly we were unsuccessful.

I warmed up, lined up, etc. There was the usual pre-race chit chat about bikes, training and tan-lines. Just like any old race in Adelaide. Except that there were 70 entrants, about 4 times what I'm used to. There were a few guys rocking Drapac-Porsche kits, and I don't think they were just fans. I thought: oh well, surely they'll take it easy for a lap, right??

The race started off downhill, I lined up near the front at the start-line. Off we went. I was holding the wheel in front of me, feeling okay, on the right hand side of the field. Suddenly, about 30 seconds in, there was a whooshing sound of carbon wheels coming up behind me. Uh oh. About 4 guys passed us, out of the saddle, attacking on the downhill!

There was a flurry of shifter clicking as everyone tried to respond. All of a sudden everyone was passing me, and I was furiously shifting up and pedalling like mad to hold on. We hit the bottom of the hill and the road levelled out into a flat and windy section. The pace was still furious, and I clung to the back of the pack, hoping that it would die off soon for some respite.

I'd find out later that the 4 or 5 guys who attacked got off the front, and the speed at this point was simply due to a few wannabes trying to bridge, and dragging the pack along with them. Sure enough, after a minute or two of this, the pace died right off and became downright cruisey. People chatted and sipped waterbottles. Just a nice ride in the country.

Every now and then somebody attacked, or surged at the front. I'd know this was happening, because 10 riders ahead of me I'd suddenly see everyone's arse go up in the air and could hear gears clicking like mad. That's the advantage of being 192cm tall I guess! Once I learned to predict these surges, I'd shift up in anticipation and hold on to the pack.

Having never raced in a field of this size, I wasn't used to having the entire left hand lane of the road filled up from side-to-side. In an Adelaide-sized field, I'm used to being able to move up whenever I feel like it. When everyone is elbow-to-elbow, this becomes considerably trickier.

The speed picked up about halfway through the first lap, where there were a few more hills. We quickly became single-file, and when a guy went past on my right, I jumped on his wheel to get a nice pull to the front end of the main field (note Liggettism!).

There were 4 guys at the front from RMIT doing all the work, and I was content to sit 5th wheel and get pulled along at some crazy pace through the rolling hills.

Towards the end of the circuit was a crazy fast downhill. My speed sensor wasn't working (I think it was bumped in transit), but I heard afterwards that we were hitting 85 km/h. As usual, I struggled to keep up on this long straight descent. Being 70kg and tall is not a good recipe for fast descending! Even with my chin on the stem and elbows tucked in, the smaller guys with a higher mass-to-surface-ratio rocketed past me.

This put me towards the back of the pack again, which by this point had probably dwindled to about 50 or so. After flying past the start/finish we hit the flat and windy section again. I don't know what happened, I think the pace surged again and my legs did not want to go!!

That somewhat familiar feeling of being dropped was there. Suddenly there was a 2m gap to the wheel in front, which requires a Herculean effort to maintain, let alone bridge. Then as I faded, it became 4m, then 10m, and then it was all over. The final nail in the coffin was when the follow car whooped its siren and drove past me.

I rode out the second lap, mostly in the company of 5 or 6 other guys who'd been dropped a bit earlier and who'd caught up to me. We had a good chat, got rained on a bit, and it was fun.

After the race, I got changed and we hung around at the start-finish line to see the finish of the men's race. The women had come in just after we'd pulled out and sadly we missed seeing them finish. Sure enough, the breakaway stayed away, with a bloke from Melbourne Uni getting the win (a general trend throughout the week).

Beer was consumed that night.

Stay tuned for more.