Saturday was the Christmas Classic Criterium at VUT, held by Footscray Cycling Club.  This is a race i have been looking forward to for a while. My training so far has been pretty good and on the morning of the race i was feeling great.

So We rode down to the race, and did a warmup.  Everything was good- getting ready for the start.. the rain began to fall. Everyone started wondering is it on or off… but the wind came back and things soon dried up.

So the Egrade race begins. good turn up of 8 riders including to young guys who looked very very fit.  The race was progressing well for the first 20 minutes. I was feeling really good and when i looked down to the garmin, i saw my heart rate was still fairly low. I must be getting fitter and i was quietly confident of a place in the race.

Then things started going badly, coming around one of the corners had to break very sharply to miss another rider who had braked to avoid a wattle bottle that had dropped on the course.  A bit of a surprise and wake up, but thats ok.  I was still travelling well and then i took a turn at the front.  unfortunately just as i rolled over the front the rider behind me touched my back wheel and bang..  Broken Spoke wrapped around the cassette.  Luckily i didn’t come off the bike and just rolled off onto the gravel.  I flipped the bike over and quickly went to work on removing the remnants of the broken spoke.. All done i flipped the bike over, hoping to get back in the race.. but no good. The wheel was so far out of true that it would not turn a whole revolution.  Game over.. walk back to the spectators area. 

I was a bit disappointed, as i was feeling really good during the race, but it was good to watch the last few bits.

The challenge now will be to get the wheel replaced. I doubt it will happen before xmas, but fingers crossed.

I did enjoy the after race bbq. it was the first time since i started training that i  have eaten a sausage and drank a beer.