Chase the Sun #2

Chase the Sun #2 is in the books for 2007, and another great race it was. I'm not sure of the final figure of entrants, however last I heard it was around 350 riders!! The tone of the day was really positive, despite the freezing wind that lashed the start finsh line, and many first time riders seemed to be out getting amongst it. The whole idea of bringing the racing to the people seems to be working, who would have thunk it!

So to the racing- The riders on course today for Felt Racing were Ash and Jack, and our superstar guest Ben Randall was flying the flag for Felt Racing 2, as Jason wasn't able to attend due to commitments elsewhere. I'll go into Ben's race in a moment, however as he had a blinder after his win at the You Yangs. The weather, apart from the wind, held out all day, with no rain to speak of, and the track was essentially dry by lap 3, which made it extremely fast and a great deal of fun!



Rollers were employed for the first time at Felt Racing, to provide a warm up in a controlled environment and to minimize the time we spend away from the tent. I know that from my point of view, it was a very welcome addition, meaning that we could warm up and still be able to deal with the other things that go on between laps.



I was elected/chose to start the race, and warmed up accordingly, whilst trying my hardest not to fly off the rollers (2nd time ever...tricky bloody things until you get the hang of it) Somehow we lucked out with getting called up to the front row of the start grid, for which we were very greatful, and the race was away!



Halfway through the first lap, I turned to see how things were progressing, and I was pleased to see that we were away, with Claxton (Giant) Spink (Giant) Randall (Felt/Spoken) and a Ballarat Cycle City/Felt Brendan Sharrat. The good news continued until the end of the first lap where I handed over to Jack for his opening lap. He took off into the mix, and charged around the course until a front tire decided to part company with its contents, namely air, and he had to rectify that situation. Sadly, the group of riders we were with are not inclined to wait around, and the chase that made up the rest of our day, began....






For the next 5 hours, we charged as hard as we could, taking all manner of risks to conserve energy and try to move forward, but it proved to be too large an ask, and we were forced to settle for 4th place as we both blew up with quite some conviction on our last laps. So it wasn't the greatest result today for us, but we can scarcely complain as we rode our Virtues as hard as we could, so no regrets just more work to do!



Congratulations to Russ and John (Giant), two deserved winners on the day for a hard fought battle. Seems they aren't just giving away cash these days, you've really got to earn it! Ben's ride today was also well worth a mention, with (unconfirmed until results appear) Ben sitting in 5th place behind us for most of the day, before the Pinnacle cycle pair passed him late in the race, and he would have finished 3rd in the solo race!! What an awesome effort, on his 2nd ride of the Virtue which he shared with his personal bike, so it would appear that he liked the ride!! Ben will be racing with us for the rest of the Chase series, and we look forward to racing with this smiling face for months to come!.

Photos will follow over the next few days, and I expect the results should appear here shortly, but in the mean time, I have a new Garmin GPS toy, and mapped a lap of the CTS course today. I've only scratched the surface of the things it can do, but it should be interesting...

And finally, I've just noticed that Paulie has updated his blog for the first time since Moses was a boy, so check it out and let him know on the comments section that you've dropped by...