Wednesday Night Airport Dash
A small number of riders fronted up for the OCC Airport Dash between Christmas and the New Year. A big scratch bunch, although fielding some weary (and sunburnt) legs with Rod Farrell, Scottish tourist Fin, Owen, Mick and Grant Roe decided to take it easy on the way out and give Anton, Laura and Dave a good head start and only reel them in on the homeward stretch.
Grant decided to patrol the back of the bunch for most of the ride out and back, with Fin and Mick struggling at first having completed 140km earlier in the day while Owen was finding his legs after spending much of the last week off the bike due to Christmas and travelling. Farrell was the danger man, with enough k's in the legs but still fresh enough to potentially cause some damage.
The action started on the down hill on the Airport straight, with MacPhillamy getting the jump out of the corner and quickly establishing a 50m gap on the bunch which was watching and waiting to see who would make the effort to close the gap. It was danger man Farrell who drove the bunch into the last rise before the dipper, reducing MacPhillamy's gap from 50 to 10m. From there, Troy drove it over the rise before Fin took the bunch into the dipper. Regretting this move later on due to his lack of local knowledge, Fin started to drive the bunch up the other side before realising how easy it is to sit on initially before punching it over the top which MacPhillamy and Troy did, winding the pace up to 50km/h across the false flat before deciding that enough was enough and settled back into a nice rhythm dropping into the second creek, where Troy jumped clear but quickly felt the k's in his legs and sat up.
Getting rounded on the second-to-last rise, MacPhillamy 1-2ed the bunch and got another nice gap with people looking at each other in the bunch before Troy jumped to catch MacPhillamy. Dragging Roe with him, they quickly made the junction but ended up sitting up again looking at each other. A passing comment was made towards Roe that if you are willing to chase and shut down moves, you need to be willing to work, so Roe took the lead into the last creek, with Troy, Fin Young and MacPhillamy bringing up the rear. At the crest, MacPhillamy made the long expected move, with Troy quickly covering the move before rounding him and taking the 50's.
A nice solid average of 39km/h had by the boys at the back.