Twenty one years ago we held the first memorial ride for Mark Webb from Toodyay to Gidgegannup, one year after Mark's tragic death.

One month after that first Mark Webb, Michael Storer was born and today rode to defend his last year's win—just as last year he rode to defend his win from the previous year—when he rode a Junior course record on his first ride on the course.

The first man home today was Ian Turner - with a 1min PB. He'd just managed to hold Stu Helm at bay. - no mean feat. Big Stu thundered down the final few hundred meters not too far ahead of Bec Mackey riding the course for the first time, the fastest woman today. Rebecca adds her name to the women's trophy as the second-fastest on the course after the various rides of Emma Pooley and later declared the course as a possible favourite! Second- fastest rider today amongst the women was Steff VanA with another PB for the season - a four-and-a-half minutes improvement for Steff on this course! But no one could match Karl McIntyre's 7:49. He sounded pleased and then headed back east for a 20km cooldown. It would have been a cool-down, literally. That wind was reckoned by the BOM to make the 20° air temperature feel like 10°. Anyway, the predicted showers didn't happen.

Now that this event is a part of the 'Hilly' series, Richard Williams completed his Hillies qualification today with another PB and Neil, our other Hand-cyclist out there, now has six Hillies to his credit this season. You could feel the relief as Neil sped past the finish after 23min cranking up the Big Gidge climb. Even Stu said on FB that he should have saved a few watts of his initial power output for the final few km; third placed Jon Gregg took 30sec from Stu there and was easily the best-placed on Standard times today. If we had a KOM ranking, that would easily be Michael Storer's.

Dashing out and back along Toodyay Road today were Troy with the trailer in tow and Steff VanA in the cabin to assist with the course signage and Lorraine on her own four wheels heading out to look after the registrations in Toodyay before heading back to look after the desk back at the school in Gidge. Troy stayed in Toodyay for a while, counted the field away and followed it back as the possible sag-wagon. Nobody needed to abandon though but Dave Nangle caused some concern when he'd failed to arrive back in the time we'd estimated - he'd had problems fixing a puncture and lost a huge hunk of time. But he got there. Gregor McNab herded riders onto the bus first thing then looked after things at the school until Lorraine arrived back when he called rider numbers at the finish; John Andrews monitored the passing of riders at the intermediate timing point on the approach to Big Gidge. Thank you all - a busy morning's work.