PNP Club Criterium Champs

Saturday morning was beautiful and sunny; unfortunately it didn’t stay that way. By lunch time it had clouded over and there was a strong wind. We got out to the race and registered, U15 boys and U17 girls were the second race after the Open men; we had 15 minutes plus 3 laps around the same Trentham circuit where the Secondary School Champs were held in September. I started to warm up around the circuit. ‘This isn’t too bad’ I thought as I started, ‘I can hardly feel the wind’. But then I turned the corner. Suddenly there was a hurricane. Much to my disappointment the hurricane never stopped or eased off but continued to blow on that side of the circuit.














The race started with a neutral lap, and then it was race on. Ollie Jones and Matt Grenfell took off and left the rest of us for dead. They ended up lapping everyone once and most people twice. Jed McDermott, another boy (whose name I don’t know), and I were next in line and working well together. I couldn’t really see what happened behind us, but I think that the next person must have been at least a straight behind. Ione Johnson, Ari Evans, my little brother Jony and a few others formed a group. I almost lapped them, finishing on the same straight, and about a bike length from Ari and Ione.







This was Jony’s first road race; he finally had a road bike to ride. Dad had recently retrieved a custom built Clamont made in 1991 from a friend (he replaced all the componentry), and so I inherited his Marin, which was a really good fit for me, and it has a carbon fibre rear triangle, with wishbone seatstays, which my old bike didn’t have. Jony got my Kona Lisa, although a little on the big side, it worked pretty well for him.



I saw lots of familiar faces, other than the people I mentioned previously I saw Courtney Grenfell, Zoe Anderson, James Truebridge, the whole Johnson family and lots of others. There was a great turnout of track juniors, most of whom I can’t name but recognise. It was a great race and was heaps of fun.

Cheers to the organizers and volunteers Garth Gregory, Clive Bennett, Kah Chan, Alan Rice, Grant Perry, and all the other people helping out. Special thanks to the guys in the Bike Barn workshop for working so hard to get the Barnes family bikes re-assembled with the right bits for us all to race today - a couple of them even came in on their day off to make sure I could race on a well set-up bike!