2013 Satalyst Tour of Margaret River - Stages 1-3 & 5

The Satalyst Tour of Margaret River is, without doubt, one of WA's top-shelf cycling events with this year's format attracting some of the big names of Australian cycling mixing in with teams at all levels (literally). Names that demand respect such as Phil Anderson, AJ Giacoppo, Jack Bobridge and Michael Freiberg took their places among amateur and sponsored teams attending four competitive stages around Cowaramup and down through rolling terrain to Augusta along the South West's famous Caves Road in the final stage. Personally, I would be riding in a lead role for the Hall Cycle Training Men's Team while Unicorn-Specialized, having lost the services of Craig Pennel for the event, had recruited a hard hitter to fill out the team.

This Blog is on the Move!

To all my readers and followers, thank you for taking the time to read my posts and race reports over the past few years. I hope that my reports have been informative, insightful and motivating to those who have considered racing and taken the step to get amongst Westerna Australia's cycle racing scene. It's been great to receive feedback from some of you and to hear that my reports have demonstrated to you what racing is like without going into technical and tactical detail.

From here on, I will be posting my reports to the Unicorn-Specialized Cycle Team blog located at http://unicorn-specialized.blogspot.com. My reprots will be accompanied by reports posted from my team mates which should give you additional perspective of the local racing scene with some write-ups going into a little more tactical aspects of each race.

Once again, many thanks for your interest in my blog and please continue to follow my future posts on our new team blog over at http://unicorn-specialized.blogspot.com.

WCMCC Age Division Road Championships :: 15th September, 2013

Racing in Western Australia sometimes offers no racing at all on any given weekend, while on others there are simply too many options. The latter was true today with Bicycling WA hosting the annual Hell of the North in Lancelin, Peel Districts Cycling Club hosting the Pinjarra Classic and West Coast Masters hosting their Age Division Road Championships in Chidlow. Couple these with quite a few local riders heading to Italy for the UCI World Cycling Tour Final, and numbers would be stretched across all of these events. Plenty of deliberation among the newly renamed Unicorn-Specialized Cycling Team eventually had 5 of the 7 team members heading to Chidlow for the WCM event.

WCMCC Wandi Road Race - A Grade :: 8th September, 2013

Today would be my first race since Collie-Donnybrook three weeks ago and so much has happened training-wise since then so I was keen to get down to Wandi and put everything I have been doing to the test. This included a good one-on-one with the Coach in relation to my hill climbing technique, an area that I have given special attention in terms of required improvement. Brad was more than enlightening in this department after I bombarded him with questions on how best to approach and execute a hill climb (short or long). But for some reason, I was feeling a little uneasy about this race...

Collie-Donnybrook Classic Road Race - Collie Cycle Club :: 17th August, 2013

The Collie-Donnybrook Classic represented the first open event I have competed in since the Pemberton Classic in early March this year. I've never raced the event before so was not familiar with the course and coupled with the event being a handicap, it was certainly going to be a first for me in both elements of the race. I was hoping for a favourable handicap and a group that would be willing to work together to either keep a gap on the rest of the field for the duration (for as long as possible) or allow each of us to conserve the energy needed to go with the chasing groups when they collected us.

WCMCC Mount Helena Road Race - A Grade :: 4th August, 2013

I've been racing with West Coast Masters for a couple of years and now I finally get the chance to race on the Mount Helena course for the first time. I've ridden all of the other regular WCMCC courses and I'm used to each of them so it was a little strange to get that sense of venturing into the unknown again. A quick study of the course elevation showed that there wouldn't be a huge amount of vertical metres to get through and while they would certainly still be a test of my hill climbing ability, I had been refining my technique to help better stay with the group when the uphill attacks would inevitably come.

WCMCC Autostrada Vespa, Dog Hill Kermesse - A Grade :: 28th July, 2013

Dog Hill was the second of three longer races for the WCMCC 2013 Road Race calendar with 100km of racing scheduled for the day's event. And along with good results, the learning experiences continue to come at a bewildering rate. It's important to note at this level that the individuality in racing that I used to know when competing in C and B grades has completely gone by the way side and the team unit is King when it comes to riding in A grade events. I've heard people suggest that any B grader can ride A grade if their fitness is there but I'm not sure that this applies any more. Yes, you can ride A grade if you want but the complexity of A grade Masters racing has seriously changed and while I can only comment on this from an observational perspective of early A grade racing, I doubt there would be many that would argue the fact that it might not be what it used to be.