Blackburn

Another race in Australia today. After suffering through the "hell ride" - a local 7am group ride yesterday - I was hesitant for today. There were more cyclists out on the beach road than I have ever seen yesterday, easily over a thousand people out on there bikes, probably more like two or three thousand! It was crazy. Anyways today Chris and I drove out to a local race and I got to experience some more if the Australian countryside.

We did two 25km loops that were pretty flat and not super fast. There were a couple of attacks but most people were content to just cruise. When we started the one large lap there was only one guy off the front with a lead of close to three minutes. And then we hit the climb, it was real steep at the bottom and Chris and I exploded the race. After 2k we were down to 4 guys and we all smashed it up the climb. We caught the lone leader just before the top and managed to drop a guy on the descent to keep the group at 4. Chris and I were both feeling really good so we started whacking it with 15k to go. We split the other two dudes and had just cracked one of them. I was just about to come around him when he turned left into my front wheel and blew it apart sending me to the ground at 45kph. I slid quite nicely and managed to tear off a bit of skin. With a broken wheel I was out of it, but Chris was able to dominate in the sprint and take his second win of the year! (You may remember that the last race Chris won back in March I crashed in the last corner, so apparently we need to work on something....)

Nothing like scrubbing road rash, but nothing too bad. Feeling pretty good actually, and now its just easy until our big team races starting a week from today.