TT over and I piked on the RR

Windy windy windy. Blustery, scarey...other races around Melbourne were cancelled even!

With the conditions deteriorating, the time you rode the race had a considerable effect on your result as I discovered when I pre-rode the course (although since you started within a few minutes of other people in your grade and endured roughly the same conditions, it made no diff to the results). It was just ironic that the stronger riders were the early starters when it was relatively calm ... heavy emphasis on the word relatively but! ....

I was 1 min 40 slower than last year and lost virtually all of that on the first bit, with the wind coming from the left, when I was blown all over the road and was really scared 'cos I wanted to get off the aerobars onto the handlebars but the bike was too unstable for me to do that......poor choice of front wheel.

I lost the rest of the time (mebbe 10-15s) into the wind after the first corner (last year I had a bum to chase) and then held up for the last bit when the wind came over my right shoulder and the final hoon into the finish, passing 2 riders. A positive was that my avg cadence was higher by quite a bit.

So I left and came home. My original intention was to do the pm RR, but wind and rain with a small group would only pull me down and given my slow recovery nowadays, that's something I don't want...or perhaps I'm just a wimp .....so a pm session on the rollers in front of the TV watching the second half of yesterday's TdF is now on the cards.

Long ride tomorrow, weather permitting.