Several Coburg members made the long trek to Modella to race the 100km handicap hosted by Carnegie on Saturday 30^th August.   Four of the Coburg women decided to race, and not wanting to miss an opportunity to spend a day with 4 fantastic chicks, club treasurer Paul Logan came along as well.  With us women being off limit, it’s hard to write a race report as I only saw one end of the race.  And I know Mal will write up a full report on the Carnegie website.  But here’s how the Coburg members went:

The limit group took off and after less than 1km, we had lost more than half the bunch.   By about the 55km mark, there were only 5 of us left, and this group included Coburg women Christine, Janet and yours truly.  Great effort by all.  Unfortunately, soon after we were caught by the chasing group, and I didn’t see much more of the race.   Also missing the chase pack was Janet who decided instead to take a wrong turn and was on her way back to Melbourne before realizing her mistake and luckily scoring a lift back! 

Logan was off chopping block, and his group were caught by scratch, who then proceeded to mow down the frontmarkers, and by about 70km, all had come together.  Christine made a valiant effort to stay with the scratch group for a few kms, before finding the pace a bit too hot!  Approaching the last 20km, there was only 8 riders in the front group, including Logan and Coburg hottie Darren Lapthorne (Lloyd Morgan).  Unfortunately for Logan, a pothole spelt the end of his race, as he came crashing down for the second time in 2 weeks!  In typical cyclist style, he was more concerned about his bike and his brand new polar heart rate monitor than the cuts and holes all over his body.  Luckily he has no serious injuries and his bike is being attended to by resident mechanic Ryan Bilstza.

Darren was right there at the end  - not sure how he ended up at this stage or who won for that matter - unfortunately I missed the end of the race whilst wiping blood off Paul’s leg. 

(NB: turns out Darren finished 3rd behind winner Robert Tighello - another great race by Darren..)

 Would be great to see more Coburg members out racing – the weather can only get better as Spring approaches!

 Awards issued:

•  Trish – the ‘I should have warmed up’ award

• Janet – the ‘Oh – I thought we were supposed to let the chasing bunch pass, that’s why I didn’t jump on the pack’ award

• Christine  - the ‘Give me a few more races, I’ll be riding off scratch’ award

• Logan – the ‘Cadel Evans/Walter Leoni’ award for crashing again and getting a bit of a reputation now…