I quietly entered the Cycling Australia – Craggy Ridge Challenge road race today. I have been planning to give a road race or two a go for some time and I may as well try one of the harder ones first up and see how we go. They also wanted to get good numbers as it did not run last year due to the Bradys Lookout road works. They fell short of the entries for 2013 on the day though with 68 riders entered across the grades.

I had spoken to the handicapper Allan Knight prior to the event and he graded me in ‘E’ grade from the information I provided to him. Turns out there was three of our morning riding group riding in ‘E’ Grade on the day, plenty of orange on the front of the bunch. ‘E’ Grade had a handicap of 7 minutes to the first ‘F’ grade group and continued back to the ‘A’ grade riders 21 minutes behind us. The course does four laps of Rosevears drive and back up over Bradys lookout then for a special treat to finish us off the last part runs back into the Legana roundabout then back out to the climb at the back of Grindelwald with the finish half way along the top of Grindelwald.

3D Course

Tony gave me some coaching out on the course to set me straight on rules and etiquette as I had no real idea on the first lap. I even got growled at for surging off the front when I was taking my turn on the front of the group, fair enough as I was apparently. After the first lap things settled down and I got into a rhythm and as the event went on I felt more and more comfortable. On the last lap we had caught the the group in front of us and we had a very large group that needed splitting up a bit so as I was feeling good I got into a good fast rhythm and lead out the last climb over Bradys and upped the tempo. At the top of the climb there were only 6 left at the front all single file behind me lapping up my draft and the group had split nicely.

Grindelwald back climb

I got on the back for a while down the hill and got some legs back. As we headed back out and up the second last climb, the young boy still with us put on a surge up the hill but we reeled him in over the rest of the climb. Just over the top the ‘C’ grade group caught us and about half of them went past us. The final challenge was the climb up the back of Grindelwald via Waldhorn drv. This is a killer hill and people were really struggling to ride up it after 73km already. I was in front of the eventual ‘E’ grade winner for a while till his better climbing legs beat me up the hill and to the line. It was close between myself and the much younger James Goodsell for third out sprinting him by a little over a second on the line.

I had a great time and definitely got better the longer the event went for. I struggled on the first lap and it takes me a while to get going but once I get in the zone I can keep going. The course probably suited me a bit today with plenty of hills. Sharon was at Bradys with heaps of other people cheering us on and she took a heap of photo’s. Sharon was going to race vets for the first time tomorrow but it is sure to be cancelled with the predicted rain.

So what do you get for coming third in ‘E’ grade:

Full results for the event are here. I came 19th overall and 3rd in ‘E’ Grade, happy with that for my first road race.