Nathan Elliott – 2012 Metro Road Championships

By Nathan Elliott (Twitter @n_sumo23) Freezing and wet conditions greeted a decent sized field for the Victorian Metro championships in Harcourt over the weekend. We were doing three laps of a revised 37km course and virtually from the beginning of the race Adam Murchie (Bike Bug) and Steven Waite (African Wildlife Safaris) rolled up the road and formed the main break of the day. No one in the peloton seemed eager to chase it down so the first lap was covered at a fairly sedate pace as the break?s advantage grew out to three-four minutes. There was a slight crosswind on the day but nothing really strong enough to split the bunch but at the start of the second lap David Kelly(Total Rush) put the hammer down up one of the rollers just past the start/finish area. I was locked onto his wheel and looked back to see that we had a substantial gap on the bunch. We rolled turns for a few kilometres and soon after Luke Fetch(Seach2Retain) joined us. We were away for about ten kilometres but were eventually brought back by a bunch that made it clear no one else was going to be let up the road. The chase seemed to splinter the bunch and only 15-20 riders had managed to come across. At this stage the break still had a fairly sizeable lead and I wanted to make the race a bit harder to make the guys that had been sitting on do a bit of work. So on the last lap, I threw in a few attacks and eventually rode away solo up one of the drags past the start finish. I could see Luke Fetch coming across so I waited for him and we proceeded to work well together but were again chased down. With twelve kilometres to go the break still had about a minute and from this point on people were throwing in attacks every chance they got, the main instigators being Dave Kelly and Luke Fetch. I tried to follow everything and over the last climb my team mate Conor Murtagh pulled a hard turn with Stu Grimsey(Drapac) on his wheel and opened up a bit of a gap. As others chased, I attacked over the top of Stu and opened up a gap. At this point I bridged up to Waite who was the only rider left out front with a few kilometres remaining, however the bunch were right on our heels and we were soon caught. In the last couple of kilometres riders kept trying to get off the front only to be chased down, which made the race pretty hard and a good situation for me. The pace didn?t ease up all the way to the line and I was able to find a small gap in the sprint and come over Luke Fetch to take the win. I would like to say thank you to our sponsors: Charter Mason, Drapac, Kosdown Printing,Giant, Salice, SMP, KASK, Shotz, On Runners,Simplesime,Champion Systems. By Nathan Elliot