Today I had my first tilt at veterans racing with the Whitemore 48km race in ‘C’ Grade. Richard told me I was ‘C’ Grade and the lady was a bit surprised when I registered for the first time and ‘asked to be in C grade’. After racing yesterday I was wondering if the legs would hold out. On the first lap I was really feeling it with the average pace around 36kmh. We did 2 laps of the course and coming past the start finish the first time I could feel my legs failing me so I downed a gel to try and get things back on track.

I was taking my regular turn on the front but had to skip every alternate turn for a few rotations till the gel kicked in. Back on track for a while but the pace was still high for me. I stuck with it and with a couple of km to the finish the pace slowed to high 20’s as a bit of jockeying was going on as I latter found out we had a couple of gun track sprinters getting ready to explode.

I learnt a lot from yesterday and had myself up near the front few. A few 100 meters out it all happened in a bang and suddenly I was scrambling to get my speed up. I pulled up alongside Richard and gave it everything I had. I passed one guy on my left about 100M out and apparently I was in second until somebody flew past me like I was standing still on my right. I just looked at the handle bars for the rest of the race to the line and held my ground for a 3RD place hitting the line at 47kmh, apparently I can sprint after all! No idea what the gaps were as I was puffing and blowing so hard I could not speak for a while.

That race really stretched me especially after racing 40km yesterday. A couple of days of recovery coming up for the old boy I think. The body needs to rebuild after that lot, I’m not as young as I used to be……

Results published here in about a weeks time! Probably a few more photo’s and bits will pop up on Facebook over the next day or so. I’ll update this if something pops up as there are usually plenty of photo’s of the VETs, it’s very social racing.

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