Vets tour – Day one: You know its coming, but you can’t do anything about it…

C bomb warning – Today’s post is brought to you by the letter C, for Cunty… If you are a sensitive soul and like to make your own bark flower oil at home etc etc, then you may want to protect your inner being and just look at the pictures today.

So – To another stage race… The Vets tour has been the only race on in NZ while I’m back, but it also happened to coincide with the Go Native Enduro MTB race in Rots and the National MTB XC round in Wellington, all on the same weekend… So, it was a commitment to select another road race over those two as you can imagine. But, as we know, its always about the people you do this stuff with, so wanted to have a good weekend away with the lads. Ango was clearly ready to roll this morning, check out the PRO drink bottle arrangement – Job application to the BMC PRO team as a Soigneur coming up:

PRO nutrition set up

Halfway across the hill we had a hint that the summer aspect of the race had packed up and fucked right off… Much to my despair, here is the proof of the DOOM that awaited us outside, as taken from inside the loving warmth of the Ron Burgundy Prado:

Is it too late to drive to Rots?

Yip… Less than impressed with this type of action especially when you have people from the Go Native Enduro race up north posting pics like this, clearly the cunty weather had been shipped the way of the roadies for the day:

Note: This is a SUMMER tour

Still, lets not let a stonking cuntox of a southerly with drifting showers put us off a good dose of road racing! Reach for that fucking winter kit and get on with it… Yay. After the usual getting changed on the side of the road action, it was time to hit the ‘warm up’, although in this instance it was more of a warm down scenario as we rode out straight into the southerly wind. For those of you that have never been here, southerly = cuntox, which is the official meteorological terminology extracted from the Metservice website. Note winter gear:

Note: This is a WINTER tour

Stage 1 – 53km’s

Pah… Such a short distance! This will be a piece of piss… Its like a third of the first stage in Bintan right… Won’t be a problem. Made even less of a problem when two of the contenders have Electronic gearing melt downs, effectively ruling them out of contention. The plan was to shake things up a bit and for me to go up the road while we saved our GC (or should that be PC?) lads for later in the day. I love to do stuff, so suited me well. There was only one problem:

The fucking wind

I nipped away in my first attack and got a little way up the road, before being roasted like a steroid infused battery chicken on the next never ending straight… Off the front, burning matches quicker than a chain smoking school teacher and looking like a complete gimp in the process. Here’s a little racing tip – When the wind is so strong you’re getting blown sideways into the gutter and the roads are long, dead straight and with no cover, then perhaps its not good attacking territory.

The stage then became like a fast training ride, essentially a pace line which echeloned one way or another based on the wind direction, which was really the main enemy for everyone. Like a lemming crossed with a gimp, I kept trying attacks… Which were wiped out by a combo of epic wind gusts and a peloton infused with Eurotrash that wanted to chase everything down like a Chihuahua dog rammed with viagra, infinitely unhelpful.

I shall cut a rather boring story short and fast forward to the moment when I regressed to a completely amateur level with a simple mistake. I had thrown down a final big attack before the turn from home, Ango coming with me (apparently we were pushing 600w, which means we have large anatomy), again, thanks to the wind and some weirdness we were chased down… Right in time for the little hill, which was right before the turn to home and into the tail wind.

Halfway up the little climb I could see it all unfolding… I felt sluggish, not major, but not peppy. I could see a slight gap and knew what was coming next, I could see it coming and automatically tried to do something about it, too late. Around the corner and it EXPLODED. Aided by the tailwind, it went ballistic, someone dropped a wheel and I had to chase like a rabid monkey to get back on, which I did to much expense. It then went again and I ran out of gears… The gap got bigger and my brain registered that I was getting dropped in a race that was half as hard as Tour OF Bintan. There was NO way I could get dropped here surely!

Wrong

I chased for 10km’s I think, in the mid 40’s, which is not so useful when the lead group was doing mid 50’s and the boys were holding on for dear life. In the end a combo of a bad mood and the stinging taste of cuntishness in my mouth resulted in me pulling the pin on the chase… BOOOO.

Meanwhile – To a group of far more useful gentlemen, AT nailed the sprint to come 2nd, again proof that the talent IS there. T-Bone managed 5th and GP was also in the top 10, so a great result for the boys. After some lunch and a lot of grumpy cunt muttering for me as I indulged in epic self loathing, it was TT time.

Stage 2 – 8km Time Trial

Oh yay… JUST what I needed for the arvo, a TT. Only 8km’s long, but fuck me with a python if I couldn’t be arsed doing a TT this afternoon, not so much a physical challenge than a mental issue. With AT’s 8 second time bonus, he had to ride the TT of his life for GC. I may have been in a ditch, but others were ready to roll. T-Bone getting an instant infringement notice for wearing some random smurf kit:

“800 watts is nothing, so fuck off”

The only upside was the weather had improved, but random winds remained, so it was going to be an interesting outing. With the Labotimiser on and the P3 rig underneath him, AT set off to get some GC glory happening:

No hearing and going slightly blind courtesy of the TT helmet, but ready to kill it

It was a simple out and back TT course… The first half was cunty to be fair, and I rode it SO badly that I cooked up the BS story that I was “running a negative split” (whatever that is) to cover up the fact I rode in my usual TT turd mode, but managed to recover and come home semi decently, aided by a favourable wind may I add. So, how did the boys do? A pretty reasonable arvo:

• Winner – McRapiste: 11.05
• T bone: 5th in 11.58
• AT: 8th in 12.04
• DN: 9th in 12.09
• Leonard: 18th in 13.01
• GP: 19th in 13.04

Yes… As you’ll note we had our bib shorts pulled down by the winner… Accidentally turns out he rode for NZ in the World Champs and came 2nd in his age group in the Italy worlds recently, which as we know from the DN Italy legs was an INSANELY hard course (the Goat is nodding his head right now). So yes, again a couple of things that always come to pass:

1. I am absolutely middle of the pack in TT’s
2. There is ALWAYS a killer waiting at one of these races, ready to drag you into the river and roll you to the bottom

With a slight modicum of ego semi restored, I went about my usual recovery regime – Hot tip, Kapiti Ice Creams are the best on the planet (I double dare you motherfucker to take them on):

This will do the trick…

Also to restore the morale, well mine at least as the boys had a great day, it was time for a dose of rolling hills as we scouted the day 2 course (fart noise). The least cunty part of the day, get your landscape freak on:

Perhaps I just park up here and spectate tomorrow?

But, just when you’re starting to soak up the serenity, there are always a couple of PowerCunts around to piss on your parade… Literally:

The team that pisses together, wins together – Yes, they compared wattage output mid stream

So, the plan for tomorrow? Well, sit in and attack at the right moments to unsettle the GC contenders. Translation: Lose my mind and attack at insane moments until I am blown to pieces. Should be fun… Fingers crossed for some SUMMER. I will also do my best to find a different letter sponsor for tomorrow’s post, so the Vegan’s can read it again without fear.