National Boulevard Crits (Coburg/N.Combine) 2/2/2008

I headed to the 'flatlands' for something different this week. 1.7kms of nice smooth fast cornering circuit. A few familiar faces spotted at the start - Tom 'choper', Paul Logan, Alan Adams, all lining up in A grade. Paul, Al, and two others are riding for Al's shop, TheBikeShed, so I was wondering if team tactics would come into play. Paul attacks from the gun, so I guess I was right! :) I chase on, the rest following behind. The first few laps were quckish with a few people trying to move. On lap 3 someone attacked, I responded on up the inside and pinchflatted my front wheel on a stone, intsa-flat. Not bad timing, I rolled 100m back to the car and swapped it out. The Mavic/20mm combo had proven dodgy in the past so I had a spare ready to go. Back into the action next lap the attacks were still going. At any time the pace backed off, I went on the attack. I soon worked out that I was the marked man. I then chased anything that moved, and anytime I moved I was chased. Not a bad work out, but nothing was getting away.

Finally at 5mins to go Paul attacked on the ever-so-small rise, Al jumps across, so I jump too. Finally there is a break and our gap is slowly growing. They're paying to third so I was happy to dig the heals in on my pulls and keep the three of us clear. One lap to go and I've done about 50% of the work on the front. I'm on the front for the final km, I wasn't going to call anyone through and they were happy for me to pull them to the line. I jump with about 250-300 to go. Al had jumped from 3rd wheel about 1/2 a second before and had a bike length on me. Paul left Al and I to have a drag race to the line. Al held his length and took the win, me 2nd, Paul 3rd. Good reward for the three hardest workers on the day. PowerTap tells me it was 12seconds at some massive watts and topping out at around 60km/h into a slight wind - that was one tough sprint!