Oh dearie me. This League thing hasn't been a particularly successful venture for me so far! This weekend we headed out to the very bonny vale of Bonnievale for the penultimate race in the 2008 Spring League. For some reason we started with the Vets again. The previous weekend, while I was in the Cederberg, the rest of my team were battling it out at the West Coast Express. By all accounts this was really 'race on' as tactics of various sorts were employed to try and get all the girls to do their share of work. As it turned out, the Club100 Ladies did most of the work and lost out at the last minute in the sprint. Having heard the war stories and feeling strong from the Cederberg, I was looking forward to starting with ladies only again, hoping to hold on for longer than the previous half hour. But this was not to be. The gun went off, a mixed bunch of men and women headed off and I was bang in the middle as we left Bonnievale on a bumpy road. The pace at first was decent, and I felt comfortable enough. But then we hit the first roller. Out of the saddle, pushing hard to keep up, my legs and lungs were screaming at me. I could see I was losing position, but I wasn't at the back, yet. As we crested, another lady came past me and I fought all I could to stay on her wheel to catch up to the group, which was not far ahead. Just as we caught the back of the pack we hit another roller. Still burning from the last climb and trying to catch up, I didn't have the speed to keep up on this second roller, and saw the group pull away. I fought my way over the top to try and catch another straggler, but she too disappeared. As I admitted defeat, I looked down at my watch: 10mins 32. Oh well, better than 5minutes. So on I went. Another girl, who had fallen off before me, came past as she had caught the back of the Masters, onto whom I also attached myself. We are only allowed to ride with those in our start group, and the Masters made it known that we were not to ride within their pack. All we could do was hang onto the back. I lasted about 10 minutes with them, next to the other lady. I was fascinated as I watched them rotate in a very orderly fashion, each taking a short stint at the front. These guys have obviously been doing it for a while!! As we climbed another roller I lost the Masters, with the lady still clinging to the back of them. Not sure what happened with her later, as she only finished 5mins ahead of me. While I'd been with these guys, we had passed a Vet, who slowly reeled me in and left me behind once I was on my own. I tried to catch up to him, but he gradually increased the gap. At one left turn, however, I saw that he had carried on straight. I hope someone went to find him, otherwise he'd have ended up in Swellendam!! So without a bunny ahead of me, I carried on, passing a junior and then with no one in sight for ages. I worried at times that I was on the wrong route. No one came past me until right at the end, as the 48km leaders flew by. At one point I was shouting to no one that it was getting very boring. Luckily the race was only 80km, so I was only on my own for about 2hr10. Interestingly enough, I was just 8 minutes behind the last of my team, which isn't so bad considering I was working alone the whole way. Although in their defence, they had been involved in a crash, ladies landing on top of each other, and had witnessed the Vets also tumbling over themselves. I'm glad I wasn't around for that. I also got to spend a lot of time contemplating the differences between road cycling and mountain biking. I'll post my thoughts at some stage soon. In the mean time, I've now decided that it is my new mission to one day stay with the front of the pack. We all need goals to work towards. I never thought road racing would be quite this tough, so there's a lot of work ahead of me!! This coming weekend we're starting at Simonsvlei and climbing Helshoogte in the middle of it. We think we'll be starting with the Vets again, so my aim is to hang on for 15 minutes. Let's see what happens...