Rob Parbery is the, rugged, bearded, doyen of all things singlespeed. This past week he was racing in Wildside, at the competitive end of an ever growing singlespeed pack.
Stage 1.
Wildside gets underway with a short 4km cruise down the road before regathering down the road for the first race stage. With most of the Singlespeed riders starting in the last group some 46 minutes after the first wave there was plenty of time for discussing bikes and gear ratios under the baking sun. The start of the first group seemed a lot slower than 2010 with no one wanting to work too hard in the in sun.
By the time we’d lined up for our start Paul van der Ploeg had already out sprinted Andy Blair & Sid Taberlay to take the first stage of the race. Those that know me, know that I’m willing to contest a 500m sprint to hole shot against anybody – before blowing up spectacularly once around the corner and out of sight, but my strategy today was start easy & finish easy (and keep it easy in the middle) saving legs for the cruise stage which I remembered as a nightmare of a climb. Not long after the start a group of 4 riders got away with another 2 between them and the main group. Feeling good I made a move to try and get across too the pair, eventually catching one and started to move up to the other, before loosing a water bottle I had to go back for. Managed to chase up onto the wheel of endurance racer Al Gribble from Victoria and he promptly dropped me up the next climb. I’d catch up again on a descent, get dropped on a climb, it was a battle that was going to characterize the next 4 days racing.
Descending, with sideburns.
The cruise over up over the two big climbs on the Cradle Mountain Link Road was no where near as bad as I remembered (or perhaps I’m a little fitter), but with the start groups re-adjusted based on you finish times and now starting in group E rather than M there was not much time to shovel in some food and drink before lining up for the 2nd race stage – a short single track section before a blast along the mining affected Que River. The E Group start was full of so many pink jerseys it looked like a Total Rush shop ride. Again not hitting out too hard, I hit the single track in 5th place and managed to move up quite a few places in he group through the muddy sections – singlespeeds to singletrack
well, possibly even into the group lead but with a long flat gravel road section ahead I sat up to wait for a group to come through.
Spinning along on a single with the group pushing their big dogs at 30+km/hr was probably a mistake – I spent the second half of the race creeping along, walking up even some of the easier climbs. Still I managed improve one position to finish 7th on the stage.