Start at the end

It's been soo long since I posted I'm now going to have to start at the end.

The series has now finished, and it ended up being really succesful for us.

Although the results are still unofficial, to the best of my knowledge, they should still be right.

Overall winner of the series
Paul Odlin
Overall winner of the womens section
Tracy Clark
2nd Overall womens section
Annaliisa Farrell
2nd Overall over 40
Neil Sutherland
3rd Overall Team
Us, Laurie Dawe Cycles


We went into the final race of the series in the overall lead with Paul, and Tracy tied with Katri Lake in the womens section.

Not long after the start proper a break went away that contained the only two people in the race that could beat Paul.
It contained a large number of riders including some very good ones so it posed a very real threat to us.
This meant that the way we wanted to ride this race was thrown out the window right from the start, instead of the team protecting Paul from mishaps we now had to mount a serious effort to chase this break down.

With most of the other teams represented in the break, including the only two able to take the series from Paul, meant we had to do most of the work ourselves.

They manged to do this despite the odds and from this point on the race more or less fell into place for us.

Although there was still breaks going off the front none posed a threat to us so we were more than happy to let them go, although Paul did get a bit worried when Hayden Roulston went away because he thought he could take the lead from him, even he if had won the race and Paul finished last, Paul would have still had enough points to have beaten him, so again no threat to us.

Later on in the race Katri drifted off the back, leaving Tracy, Annaliisa and I thought one other women in the bunch, so I quickly did a bit of addition and worked out that if there was another women still in the bunch and she finished ahead of Katri but behind Tracy and Annaliisa, and if Annaliisa finished ahead of Tracy then Tracy could win the series, Annaliisa could win the day and also leapfrog Katri into second so when Ross came back for some bottles I told him. Oh for race radios at times like this.

Although it was a gamble because the other women could have thrown a spanner in the works I had the confidence that our women could do the job and I thought they deserved to be first and second overall because they had shown their class, consistency and determination throughout the series. Not to mention it would increase the payout the team would get at the end also.

Although some of the teams have thought we may have raced negatively at some rounds they need to look at it from our point of view and also from the point that this has been touted as a teams event.
We had the lead and we had to protect that lead, that was our job plain and simple.
The other teams job was to take that lead from us something they couldn't do because of the way we raced. Although we may have only placed third in the teams category I think we were by far the best TEAM in the series and my congratulations go out to each and everyone on our team, you have done a fantastic job in this series and you have shown them all how to race throughout the year as a TEAM.

I will as I get time continue to update this post so you have a full roundup of the series and results from each round.