Ballarat Sebas CC TT Championships 2010

Warm up? What warm up!? :)

The friendly guys over at BSCC gave us the nod for a start their club TT champs, to post times, not take medals. The final 8kms of the course was the Avenue of Honor which is the road we'll be TTing for the National Masters Champs this Friday. This was a good opportunity to get on the course in full TT setup and going flat out against the clock.

I'd planned a recon ride of the nationals course on Saturday morning, but in typical Ballarat style, it was raining. Coffee and an easy spin on the trainer was the substitute.  We arrived at the start line around 1:40pm, start time was 2pm but usually outsiders are either sent off last or somewhere midfield.  Except today, we were off first! 2:05pm start time for me so it was a very short warm up.  What I missed in the warm up was soon made up for with 2kms of head wind and the first km being a slight uphill drag.  Just after the first corner I'd made my first catch and release, it was my 2minute man.  Gebert was my 1minute man again this week and I slowly clawed him back at about km 5 or 6.  I could see Ambry (3 or 4min man, I can't recall) up the road but it took the whole length of Cuthberts Rd to pull him in.  Onto Dyson Drive with a huge tail wind, we flew past a few people watching proceedings.  Even at full gas I remembered seeing a guy mowing his lawns and his 2-3yo daughter following with her plastic push mower - cute!

Enough of the scenery, back onto the main road and into the wind. 8kms to the line took a while on the long straight road.  The wind was head/side but speed was surprisingly quick. The locals were out in support, one car and a trailer almost clipping me, maybe he wanted a closer look at my form? F'ker. Even with the distance data staring me in the face on the SRM, I still managed to miscalculate the distance to the line and almost cooked myself a few kms early. After a few more kms of one-on-one with the TT pain demons I'd hit the line in 25:26. 45.4km/h. The course was fast and I'd got the pacing right. 

Fastest time of the day by 1min15secs. If I can repeat the effort this Friday at the Nationals I should be at the pointy end somewhere. Gold is the goal, I'll be happy with a podium, but just being there at the start will do.  Four months ago I'd written off even riding the nationals when I was in Geelong Hospital - I'm happy just getting to the nationals and fighting for a time... and I'll fight f'ing hard with all I've got!

Big thanks to BSCC for allowing us to ride and the write up in the Ballarat paper.

Overall results:

S. Miller (HCC)     25:26.46
M. Lama (BBN)       26:42.41
A. Weightman (BSCC) 26:48.59 (BSCC Club TT Champ)
G. Gilbert (BSCC)   27:13.03
W.Gebert (Coburg CC) 28:56.73
N. Bilney (BSCC)    30:25.70
S. Grigg (BSCC)     30:27.20
T. Turley (BSCC)    30:32.09
S. Wallis (BSCC)     30.42:69
S. Sanders (BSCC)   30:43.44
S. Cody (BSCC)      31:09.19
P. Ambry (HCC)      31:13.28
C. Stebbing (BSCC)  32:37.76
B. Pollock (Mildura CC) 33:43.09
R. Kerr (BSCC)      34:01.83
S. Denno (BSCC)     34.05:11
D. Peters (BSCC)    34.47:55