When I was 26, I would jokingly refer to my bike as the CWM (Cross Wind Missile). I'm not 26 anymore...

About Me

My name is Dean Russell and I raced road bikes and some track endurance in the 1990s. I stopped racing in 1999 when I was 26. After almost thirteen years of being a lazy slug I decided to put my sorry backside onto a bike seat and have another crack at racing. This blog chronicles my journey from being completely unfit and overweight to becoming one of the oldest Elite A grade riders in Queensland...and then slipping nicely back into Masters racing.

Saturday 7 June 2014

Race Report: Metropolitan Titles Road Race, 1 June 2014

This was my first race 'back' in Masters A and I'm afraid there is not a lot to report. It was a day of delayed starts and noob errors that combined to make one very boring and meh Sunday.

For starters, the race start was delayed by one hour and fifty-five minutes (some mix up with the traffic control). This was a particlular pain in the arse for me, as the trip from Dalby to Mount Alford is two and a half hours, so I could have left have at 8am instead of 6am.  There was also the fact that pre-race meals and hydration were timed around the original start time, so I needed to recharge and top up while I was waiting in the car. Honestly, if I hadn't driven so far to get there, I would have spun around and come home. 

The race itself was not too exciting for me. A break of six riders bolted almost from the start (a very good group of riders for the record) and they stayed away. I was positioned perfectly to go with them, but actually hesitated, thinking that a 90km break would not steal the day's spoils. I was of course, wrong, wrong, wrong. I had a solid dig off the front on the second lap and managed to get across to two others who were away, but it was short lived and I was destined to finish in what was left of the main bunch (maybe half the original field?) by the end.

Apart from my 'not going with the break' noob mistake. There were two others. I have recently been on a seemingly never-ending quest to get a creak out of my bike. I regreased my seat post the day before this race and obviously had not tightened the bolt properly. My seatpost had slipped by about 1cm - 1.5cm by the end of the race. This explains a lot as I was not feeling strong when seated and ended up getting an 'out of the blue' hamstring cramp right near the finish.

The other noob error involves hydration. I don't think I drank enough before the start (with the delay) and then ended up sucking down my two bottles of water with still 15km or so to go. This probably didn't help with the random cramp either.

So in the end, a day to forget as far as the racing goes.

As a positive I did race today with super-coach Mark Brady (my coach). Mark has been a VERY successful masters A rider but has recently been focusing on triathlons. This was his first road race in over a year. There was an awkward moment where I jumped over Mark very hard and bridged across to someone who was off the front. Instead of being impressed with his own coaching, Mark had the hide to complain about how I had done this to him! I guess you can't please everybody ;)


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