WHILE many of the riders who took part in Sunday’s Forbes Flat Land Cyclo Sportiff treated it as a social event tackled at a steady pace, four Bathurst Cycling Club members adopted a different approach.
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Taking part in the the 72 kilometre event, staged in conjunction with a longer 120km ride, Harry Bryant, Stuart Renshaw, Toireasa Gallagher and Brooke Tuynman pushed hard over the entire course.
They averaged 40km/hr and hit a top speed of 48km/hr before battling it out to the line in a bunch sprint.
Bryant took the win ahead of Renshaw, with Gallagher third and Tuynman fourth.
For Tuynman the ride had the added bonus of helping her preparation for the upcoming Cycling NSW road championships.
“We went into it going to go as hard as we could and see who got to the finish line first. We did work hard, it was only the four of us from the word go as well,” Gallagher said.
“It was just go and go hard and the boys swapped off in turns and I popped through every now and then. We still had a sprint to the line for position, it was all really close actually, you could have thrown a blanket across the line at the end.”
While Gallagher was pleased to have maintained the quick tempo set by the bunch on a course that offered riders no respite given its flat profile, she was also impressed with Bryant’s effort.
“Harrison is from Orange but he rides for the Bathurst club. He was riding strong from the word go, and it will be interesting to see where he is going to progress to, being fairly new to the sport. Really he has only been in cycling for three years,” she said.
“It was pretty hard, I haven’t raced that far for a little while. I was just hoping I could hang on as long as I could, that was my goal.
“It’s called the Flat Lands Classic and it’s pretty dead flat, the only hill in it was pretty small prepared to our hills.
“But it was hard because there was no rest, you had to pedal. There was no down hill relief, so I was pretty happy I stayed until the end. That was one goal ticked off there.”
Gallagher said she was happy to support the Forbes Cycling Club event, which was run for the second time on Sunday. She will also be recommending it to more Bathurst Cycling Club members.
“The field might not have been huge, but the organisers said it was double the numbers from last year. It’s a race I’m going to go back to, it was easy to ride, you just turned up and everything was ready to go,” she said.
“The course wasn’t difficult to figure out and I will definitely be telling more people to come.”