The Hillwood Silver Wheels 2014 was held today and it looked a good course with a decent hill climb and another small climb out on the highway so I was in for another crack at road racing. Richard lives in Hillwood and said it would suit us both being Ok on hills. A field of 42 across all grades (A to F) lined up on a perfect Sunday afternoon for 55km of road bike suffering. We had 11 of us racing in ‘E’ grade but only Richard and myself from our FHaT riding group.

We were running quite late after I had to do some quick tuning of my gears before we left home and the drive out took a bit longer than I expected so I had just enough time for a very quick 3.7Km warm up before the briefing and our time to start. I forgot my heart rate monitor and had the wrong bike profile set on my bike computer, not a good start. The first couple of laps were uneventful and I held a bit back for later in the race while still taking my turns on the front.

On lap 3 (of 4) I came to the front a little before the big climb and I thought I held my pace but half way up the climb nobody came past and looking back I had a quite large gap back to the pack. I held my pace up the hill but towards the top I needed somebody to work with me along the highway into the head wind so slowed just enough for Richard, Neil and young Robbie to come across the gap and then we all worked together along the highway to put a sizable margin into the rest of the ‘E’ grade pack.

On the climb for the last time on lap 4 one of the faster grades caught us and I was watching all the red numbers (‘E’ grade) so nobody got hidden in the pack and tried to keep everybody in sight. Towards the top of the hill I had hit the red zone big time and put in a huge (read painful) effort to get onto the back of the group before the highway. I passed Richard and tried to get him on my wheel but he was gone and dropped away. Some how I got on the back and got a nice draft down the small hill to recover.

There were 3 of us on the back of the pack following the faster guys and daylight behind us so I though 1st, 2nd or 3rd was on the cards today with only a few KM to go. Going down the hill into Hillwood I positioned myself in front of Neil and young James and got onto the wheel of one of the fast guys. Around the gravely turn without crashing and a few 100M sprint to the line and I managed to hold out Neil by 0.3 of a second. James apparently thought there was another lap to go and missed the sprint.

We all thought I had won ‘E’ grade but unbeknown to us young Josh Gittus had got hidden in the fast bunch that passed us on the last lap and also did a lap time 1:20 faster than us on the last lap to take first place. Ah well it sounds like Allan (the handicapper) will be putting him up a grade after that effort. So I came 2nd in ‘E’ grade, won $10 and had a great race.

Overall results here and Grade results here and Cycling TAS race report (with nice pic)

[Show as slideshow]