PNP Balfour Pennington Road Race Series 2009

Intro
After a long break over winter, that was made longer due to the weather and me getting sick, I was a bit out of shape. This year’s Balfour Pennington Series was really just for training. I had started riding regularly and was very pleased to find I hadn’t lost as mush fitness as I had feared. This series was very well run, organised and marshalled, and was a very fun experience.

Round One- Burnham Wharf Lyall Bay
My favourite thing about these races is that they don’t start until lunch time so we still get to sleep in. I was in the limit group and the people at the front were setting a very fast pace, I soon got dropped and was on my own until I caught up with another dropped rider. As we neared the turn-around we could see the remains of limit as they went by in ones and twos, not in any kind of bunch. The other bunches passed and though I tried I couldn’t manage to stay with any of them. As I was starting to speed up and sprint for the finish line ‘Scratch’ came flying buy, broken up because they were all sprinting too. Needless to say my exceptional sprint of about 40km/h suddenly felt a little bit pathetic. Nevertheless it was an enjoyable ride and a great start to the season of racing.

Round Three- Wainui Coast Road
After missing round two, I was keen to race. I had some knowledge of the course as I pre-rode it in training for the Wellington Secondary School Road Champs last year. This time the limit group of four worked quite well together. We dropped one rider about halfway to the turnaround, but the remaining three of us held the other groups off until we only had about 5 km left to go. We all picked up our pace and managed to merge into Break 4. However the pace was picked up dramatically when Break 3 caught up and we all (the limit riders) got dropped. I managed to get to the finish before any of my fellow limit riders and got a personal best average speed of 31km/h.

Round Four- Mirimar Loop + Mount Crawford
After some encouragement from Steve Chapman, I decided to move up to Break 4 in this race. This was a big mistake as not only was the pace quite fast but there were hills in the course. I kept up on all the little streets around Mirimar but then Awa Street was under us and it was too much for me and I got spat out the back. There was a strong wind going around the coast and I was by myself. By the time I had clawed my way back up Awa Street again (we had to do three laps of a 13km circuit plus a 3km hill climb at the end) I had caught up to another stray rider, who I rode with for the rest of my second lap and my third. As we approached the killer climb up Mount Crawford I dropped her and progressed slowly towards the finish line at the top of the hill. Not one of my most victorious rides but it was still fun.