O dear - it was cool and there was a long list of 'no-shows' but still, a beautiful morning; very nice enjoying a mugful at the Zamia in the sunshine after packing everything up. So we didn't make the hoped-for 50% women riders again (47% today) but in the PBs list 3/4 were girls with Liz Sheehan's 1.38km/h leading the way. Ali Ramm made the most of one of the few events in this series that she's going to be able to ride: 0.5km/h faster than her best previously.

Amanda continued to make her mark in the points table but there are a bunch not far behind in the totals. Hayden Long tried out the 24km option for the first time today - no, this is just a 'one-off' - he's preparing for the National Para-cyclist championships in January; next time he'll follow Matt Burton's lead and go for a bit of distributed speed work. Matt, himself was doing a bit of endurance stuff today riding back from Busselton where he'd probably been checking out the Iron-man course a few times so a few quick 17km intervals today weren't on the program. So Patrick S-W had a little more time to pfaff around at the start today but not too long because Big Matt (Illingworth) is never a man to take for granted - #1 on Standards, of course. Again it was reassuring for those of us interested in the distribution of Standards results across ages and genders to see Amanda leading the women there too; and second overall. Deb Kempe was in third place on that measure, with a number of other women right up in the rankings.

Gregor McNab was already in the park on his first day on the job of setting up the course when I arrived. He had warm-up and a ride before he needed to strip it down again and take the trailer back to its home. Scott Graham and Tom Higgins were the blokes behind the desk although I had to borrow Tom for a while later on as a temporary Bib-number-caller, part of a team of them filling in as stand-ins; many thanks to Nicholas Connan, Sam Flockhart, Tom and, finally Lorraine when she had finished her starter's job. Number-callers and back-up timing are certainly not needless indulgences; several leading riders today would be quick to disabuse anyone of that. Cathi Dixon was again the starter's assistant, assembling and posting riders across the road at either end of which Andy Candy and Steve McKiernan manned the barriers. Thank you all - on behalf of myself and at least one hundred and four others.