Australian Junior Mountain Climbing Championships

Drew Morey is an athlete of ours, who has trained consistently over the last 12 months and was rewarded with some great results last weekend.  As a first year U17 rider, he was up against older and much bigger riders. For those who know Drew, he is still a pocket rocket sized rider, but hasn’t let his size hold him back.  Here is Drew’s report on how the time trial and road race unfolded.

Drew Morey’s Race Report:
The Australian Junior Mountain Climbing Championships was a major goal for me, and it’s a race I really enjoyed doing last year. The course suits me, and I like climbing a lot making it the perfect race. I did loads of training rides with my brothers and their friends out in the Dandenongs, where I tried to hold their wheel for as long as I could, and with Bob and Helen out at Kinglake where I received concentrated individual training and efforts to do. When the Friday before the race finally came I was relieved and nervous at the same time. It was time to see if all the hours of training and racing would pay off.
 
Day 1: ITT
 
A 12 o’clock start is always nice, it means warm weather and a welcome sleep in, although not a long one. Warming up Bob and Helen set out efforts, which worked perfectly. At the finish of the time trial it felt really slow. But when I got to the finish and waited for Pierce Connor who started 2 minutes after me, he reassured me that even though my effort might have felt bad it still could have been really good. He was right. I finished in 14th place, a result which I was extremely happy with.
 
Day 2: Road Race
 
Checking my Dad’s iphone the day before, the weather app was predicting between 6-9 degrees at the start time of the race. The true extent of the cold became apparent when I rode from our accommodation to the start line, not being able to feel my fingers.
After rolling around with some of the other ‘Kelly Cycle Coaching’ dudes for a while to get warm enough, I soon found myself on the start line, ready and excited about the race. Bob was there, giving me race instructions.
 
It didn’t take long to get warm, the pace was fast from the start. For the first part of the race before the mountain, I was sitting mid-field, ready to move up before the climb. I sat around 8th wheel at the start of the Mountain, and stayed there for most of the race to follow. Over the Mountainous part of the race, there were several accelerations by leading riders trying to lift the pace to reduce the size of the leading bunch.
 
The numbers in the group slowly whittled down, and at the half-way mark of the mountain there were only about 16 of us left.  A group of 11 of us was the leading group with 7km to go. At 5km to go, one of the several accelerations resulted in 8 riders riding away from me and Matt Ross, all the rest having already dropped off. Matt and I kept working until close to the finish line, giving me 9th place.
 
Below is photo of me finishing the race at Dingo Dell on Mt Buffalo.