Kulaijaya Metric Ride

Ryan had told me earlier before this trip that he wanted to get some result here. Since it was a training race for me, I decided to help him out.

I had been ill for the past week and hadn't put in much training before this. So I didn't feel very good at the start of the race when the pace picked up. But i tried to get into the first few breaks and launched a few myself. I want to pull some of the riders out with me and get the pack chasing while Ryan could sit in and get pulled along. When I was almost done, I was glad that Ryan got himself into the selection when another big attack went. It split the pack up and I was in the back group. I thought my job was done. All I had to do now was cruise along with this group to the finish and hope Ryan could fight for a sprint in the finish. To my horror, the front group went the wrong way and because of that, my group had overtaken them! Good thing the marshals neutralised the race and allowed the "front" pack to pass us before continuing the race.

Even though the race was back to normal, things were a little different now. My group could see the pack ahead and riders tried to breach the gap to the front. I didn't want that to happen but i know it was inevitable that the race would come back all together again. When a Malaysian tried to breach the gap, I followed his wheel immediately. I worked with him and in a short time, we reached Ryan's group. I spent no time resting behind and went straight to the front of the group to help pull them along. There were a couple of Fuji riders and DB2 Bikelabz riders. So Nick Swallow refused to work with us. Not everyone was giving their fair share of work. After a u-turn, the race came back altogether. It was an open race again except for two riders in the break up ahead. They had a gap of around 3mins. I tried to rally riders to work together but unfortunately not everyone was interested. I was a little disappointed that Fuji didn't want to work. They were one of the bigger teams and had no riders up ahead. It seemed that everyone was more interested in their own well being. So DB2 Bikelabz did the lions share of the work with Dirk, Amir and I taking turns at the front. Again, I was disappointed as Dirk only seemed interested in attacking and i felt Amir didn't give his all at the front. Despite that, the gap came down to only 1 and a half minute with maybe 20km to go. I was getting pissed so i attacked a couple of times to get others to work.

In the last few kms, Amir attacked and managed to maintain a gap at the front. So we sat up and did nothing more. I tried to recover from my efforts and hope to give Ryan a good leadout at the end. In the finishing straight, Michel (Fuji) tried to pull Mun Ho (Fuji) to the front. I latched on to their wheels immediately with Ryan behind me. When I saw Michel about to peel off, I immediately accelerated to block Mun Ho intentionally and pulled Ryan to the front. I gave everything of what's left of me and then peeled off. Ryan went on to finish ahead of the pack while i rolled past the finish line.

It was a good result with Amir coming in 3rd and Ryan 4th. I believed it could have been better if we worked together and catch the 2 guys up ahead. But oh well, I earned 160rm (which i have yet to collect from Ryan). Not bad for a days work! ;-)