Self Righteous Cyclist

Northern Combine and Coburg Cycling Club hosted the Jack Wood Memorial Handicap to honour the memory of Jack on the Glenaroua course, just out of Broadford.  The 16min bunch of 8, started 18min behind limit on 34min in conditions as good as you could hope for at this time of year. By two thirds the way around lap one, we were down to 6, but still rolling strong. Shayne Kirby gave us a time call of 3min to the group in front and 7min to Tom McDonough's 25min bunch. It was deflating to know that we had made no progress on the group of 11 in front of us with a 3min head start, containing some pretty handy riders. On lap two, Shayne was parked at the top of the Sugarloaf Creek climb and this time the margin was down to one and a half and four to Tom’s group. This time we were in with a shot. We took the left hand turn onto the Broadford-Glenaroua Rd and had the 19min bunch in our sights. We swept them up and a good few of them including Roger Venning, Seb Slezak, Carl Simmons, Stephen ...

What travels at 100km/h, has 4 heads, 12 wheels, a kitchen sink? Stephen Saunders' Kombi on the way to Balliang for the Northern Combine Pop Stewart, Alf Walker and Norma Adam's Handicaps. Never mind how we fit 4 bikes into and onto a Kombi, all I can say is that I was rewarded with the most leg room in the back. Needless to say that I was "on the rivet", "in the wheels" and "chewing bars", and we hadn't even left Melbourne. Business Class in the Kombi: Tom, Roger & Steve Welcome to bucolic Balliang where thanks to global warming the weather just keeps getting better each year. The late autumnal weather was turned on as about 60 riders from as far afield as Portland and Warrnambool fronted up for three torturous threshold laps, including a challenging climb, corrugated gravel and a stiff northerly headwind. Before the race, Bella Gadsen (limit) came over to me and asked me to take care of Liam Vaughan who was riding his first race. Happy to...