Steven Ludford says:

Physically, I did not enjoy this race. Mentally, I loved it, with numerous tactical decisions and a bit of teamwork. A difficult start, found a group but immediately sensed it would be tough to stay with. Myself and ‘Mucker1974’ dropped back from the group and found ourselves together for a few miles in need of more firepower which arrived in the shape of ‘flyger’ plus another I forget name of. They arrived with a little more power than I had so I dropped to 0.0w/kg hoping Neil would get the message to go with them and forget me … my race over … well, no it wasn’t. ‘Runner2003’ and ‘Ruud.B’ caught me but didn’t ride through with momentum so I jumped on, had a brief rest, then actually contributed until we came back up to Neil who was now solo after a glitch. ‘Runner2003’ appeared to be strongest and eventually rode away from us, leaving 3, I was unsure if ‘Ruud.B’ was riding clever for a late break/sprint or starting to get tired. On the penultimate ‘kicker’ Neil put in really strong watts, 100ft gap quickly, I continued up the hill deliberately pulling less watts to see if he could create a gap worth protecting, 200ft+, success, unfortunately for ‘Ruud.B’, but hopefully, not unexpected, I now sat on his wheel regardless of speed and power and allowed Neil to keep increasing the gap. My new partner now had a choice of losing more and more time or pulling me back in his slipstream. Now sensing he was definitely getting tired, on the final uphill I attached and broke away, apologies sir, it was not personal, but the two blue jerseys probably helped you understand the scenario that played out. So, bizarrely, about 25/30 positions lower than Tuesday but equally fulfilling race.
Race stats: Age : 56, Weight : 95kg, IF=0.936
Averages : 151bpm, 270w, 2.84w/kg.

Rocket Roy Nield says:

Nice write-up Neil. This was a real puncheurs course and I just didn’t have enough punch. Quite enjoying my move from RGT with some decent racing and great to see an organiser who enforces his rules rather than sweep them under the rug.

Mike Hagen says:

I rode a smarter race than on Tuesday, sheltering in the draft of my group a fair bit. My group was holding positions 18 through 27 or so; it was a good group. I was trying to go hard at the bottoms and tops of the shorter climbs, and survive the longer ones. That was working well, then we got to the long 3 km climb out of Albert Town at about 26 km, and there leonelcunha and boggybill70 went hard and it broke the group up. At the top, those two were away, I could see s.cata just ahead, and I was riding with fnajazzman. He and I traded off for a bit, then coming into Lake Hawea I decided to attack one of the snappers and see if I could get away. It worked a charm! I nailed the climb, and, I don’t know, maybe fnajazzman missed a shift, but I got 50 m on him by the top and stretched that to 150 m shortly after. Then it was just a cruise the last 6 km to get 21st, except fnajazzman wasn’t giving it to me, he closed to within 75 m and it was a hard last few km.

lrollin says:

A bit less than 5 kilometers with the lead group at the beginning, and then, at the first real attack, I got dropped. I rode solo for a while and then waited for the group with Grochang, who was 250 meters behind. A fairly large group formed, but an attack by BareRemi shattered it. I followed him and rode with him for 5 or 6 kilometers before losing his draft *. Again, a slowdown and waiting for Grochang, rocket996, and CerveloKevin, who were still 200 meters away. We rode together in the final part, on a slight downhill, to the final sprint, which was won by Grochang.

*Since the new Rouvy update, there have been quite a few issues with riders disappearing and losing the drafting effect.

Torben Adolph says:

My plan was to stay in zone 3-4 (power) but ended up in high zone 4 and 5+6 from the start. I didn’t catch any other riders during the race that was able to work on draft between us, so this was again a one man race for me. 2/3 of the race my stomach again didn’t want to play along and that ended in me couldn’t even do freaking 200 watt for the most of the remaining race.
Despite of an internal gasturbine I only got a 68th place.
Now it’s recovery ride until the long Sunday “race” with the Muckers 🙂