Race Report

We were treated to some amazing performances again this morning: three course records! Maybe none was unexpected but each was very nice to see happening. Freebs did it again – at 47.7km/h for the 5-lapper; Emily Loughnan led a depleted women's field to shave over three minutes from Steff's previous benchmark for the '80' and Matt Burton reduced Patrick's time, set last year, by almost a minute and grabbed the Master's #1 ranking while doing it. So we'll scratch his name on the 'Norris' trophy for the effort. The #2 Masters ranking was a pretty creditable performance too – by Anna Heitz who also took home the medal for second-placed woman. Last year's #1 woman rider was in third place: Wanda Jansen Van Vuuren. It was her first ride at the distance last year and this year she improved it by a minute, so she wasn't resting on her laurels.

In the 'if-only' category was the performance of Colin Rose: despite a couple of punctures he still managed to complete the 10 laps in a PB time. The conditions were probably fairly testing. Although the rain held off except for a few drops about the start time (the serious stuff was apparently distributed either side of the Wandi circuit), it remained fairly steamy. Another in the 'if-only' group was our Alison Ramm – if only she had brought a pair of shoes with cleats on both feet, she would have had a ride but nevertheless she stayed and was the person who presented the medals at the end; last year she earned one herself.

Also there at the presentations was Ian Turner. He had managed the desk throughout. At the start was Lorraine; Tom Alexander was also at the start/finish, calling numbers etc and times for Steve whose Garmin had thrown in the towel after the few drops of rain early on. Steve himself had to call it quits when he had mechanical trouble on the penultimate lap. Sadly, there were too many DNFs but at least only three of them were the result of punctures.

Down the road from the start, Marcel Weijers marshalled the Wandi Drive entrance; at the other end of Wandi Drive our pofessional friends from QTM managed traffic; along Lyon, at the Magenup roundabout, John Ferguson was kept busy for several hours and, on the last corner of the circuit, Stuart Murray was the man in charge. Joe Grasso was the bloke who, single-handed, set-up and packed away the course and next time at Wandi gets his chance to ride – in two weeks. That was our team today. Thanks people, as always.