Birchwood Road Race

The Birchwood road race started from Big Marine Park Reserve this year, dropping the decisive field-splitting hill from years past. I was out pretty late the night before, but fortunately our race wasn't until 2pm. Mainly I was hoping for no mechanicals or crashes, as last week was the week of flat tires!

The race pretty much stayed together the whole time. A couple of attempts to split the field happened, but didn't seem to amount to much. I stayed near the front to stay safe and to watch for the split that never really happened. There was a crash that affected a lot of the field, and fortunately I was in front of it. Other than that it was pretty uneventful.

As we were getting to the end of the race and everyone was still together, I moved up to third wheel or so, expecting something to happen. Still nothing. There was one rider of the front. Feeling frisky, I lit up my one match to catch him. I only got a few seconds' rest before he wanted me to take a pull, but I was not recovered yet and slowed us down. We were both tired, and pretty soon I found myself riding backwards through the field.

Even then, the field was bunched up ahead of me, and I almost caught back on, and we were at only a mile to go! Not sure what happened in the end, but it could only have been a massive field sprint.

Teammate Drew had beer waiting after the race, and we sat around BSing for quite a while after the race. It was a nice day for a race, no incidents, and I felt good about my performance. I made my effort - if you don't try, you'll never win eh?

Thanks Birchwood and officials for a well-run race.