Tour de Manawatu 2010

The Tour de Manawatu has a couple of short steep climbs early on, on the way out of Ashhurst. After this there is a long but incredibly gradual climb and fall with one other lump before the finish back in Palmerston North after 116km. This sort of course would normally suit me, but today I was backing up from consecutive 200km epics with the GWALoop and the K2 from previous two weekends, and the Tour of the Bay the weekend before them.. This was weekend four from four and for me it was one of those days where if I had not entered in advance and paid an entry fee I may well of not turned up to ride and stayed home for a sleep in.

Ride Data:
Distance:	115.47km	5726 Calories
Time:	3h47m35s	30.4 km/h (60.4km/h MAX)
Elevation:	Ascent: 933m	Descent: 929m
Cadence:	Avg: 91 rpm	Max: 119 rpm
Ride Data:	Garmin Connect / RideWithGPS
Location:	Palmerston North, NZ	7 November 2010

I was managing to hold my own on the initial part of the climbs which denotes significant hill climbing improvement from the past. Unfortunately, I had a combination of four different riders either dropping their chains or getting punctures immediately in front of me on the way up the hill. The net effect of this was the same as my past hill climbing experience – losing touch with the bunch by the top. Ultimately this mattered little. I didn’t have a great deal of power in my legs today. Riding my fourth event in as many weeks was catching up with me so with tired legs I rode it out in generally solo riding through to the finish.