The Warnie

This year’s edition of the 273km Melbourne to Warrnambool was characterized by unusually good weather, and the best showing from The King’s Men to date.

Representing TKM, albeit all in stinking, putrid, abhorent Random kit, were three of our established weapons (The Smackie, The Chef and The Pimp) and two randoms  (Sean and Dave) who are each 3 rides away from completing their qualification. Until that time comes, they are still just pieces of shit not usually worthy of a mention, but they did us, and themselves, proud, so we’ll give them a mention just this once.

Our Warnie race literature has also evolved over the years, some would argue maybe for the worse, but hey. Previous years saw this superb advice from our resident pro, SMAX:

“Just hold on to your pink sock until Camperdown, then pull out your weapon and go WHACK WHACK WHACK” – sounds easy, right?

An absolutely huge effort for Pimp and Sammy to spend over 200km in the break with some big names - doing TKM proud and getting reward for all their massive KMs since forever.

If you've not seem this ripper video, it's got plenty of love for the break, and our boys. Check it out....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jaw9Xbzxak&feature=youtu.be

Anyway, here are some thoughts from the gents themselves:

PIMP

How do you explain a race that lasts 7:13 with 6 hours in a break? Why would anyone actually want to do that race? Because it is hard, a headfuck, breaks grown men, but most of all, bloody awesome.

Since changing coaches about 6 weeks ago, I've started to feel better and better, and yesterday was the most prepared I have ever been for a cycling race.

When the neutral zone was over I was feeling really good and when I saw a couple of big hitters go up the road I thought that is my move too. The break was hard and long but worth the effort. Once we were caught at about 230km I hit a bit of a hole as I was out of food. Luckily got slung a gel from a mate and boom I was back. Too late for a chance in the winning break but just did enough to finish up the front out of danger.

Legs were strong all day. Never missed a turn. All those crazy solo kms over the past 12 months worth it. 

SMAX

As always, it was a rush for me and running around for a last minute and missing my sunglasses. Lucky I have mates in high places in the pelo and Avanti on the line sorted a set of glasses that they would get to me within the first hour of the race. So off I went back to the Avanti car hanging on to the side as they open up a new set of glasses for me. Legends 

Meanwhile, back to the action

Early moves were on and Pat Shaw was keen to get up the road. A few little sneaky attacks were around and finally bang off one went again with Pat and Pimp followed and away she wrote. The big teams weren’t concerned with the early break and everyone then basically had a chill and pumped along as this usually happens in the Warnie until it was time to start to get the tempo moving.

Great work by Pimp for getting up the road and getting amongst the KOM’s and Sprints. As those boys worked hard it was basically chat time in the peloton until a few DS’s started to get their boys to start pushing the pace. AWS were the first to start chasing and the young man Sean was put on the front to start to bring back the break, then it was Drapac then it was Search and then it was Avanti and Budget!

Nothing much happened but for me I blew a wheel up 5k to Camperdown and I started to panic, I was feeling unreal and usually at some point of the race I start to feel crap then come good but today was different I was just feeling mint. Luckily I was attended to straight away from SRAM support and they dropped a new ZIPP in and away I was getting paced back into the peloton again just before we hit the climbs where I thought it was going to be PARTY TIME. Well PARTY time it wasn’t. It was casual tempo up the climb and I am thinking what is going on, why aren’t we trying to rip it to shreds.

We turn left after the climbs and word gets around we are only a few minutes to the break and the GAS IS DOWN BIG TIME.

Shortly after we see the boys up the road, grouse job by Pimp. I know how it feels it’s an amazing feeling to be in a move for so long rolling into town with everyone yelling out to you. Well done pal.

So this is where the race started to unfold.

It was total attack time. Everything was going off the front, attack after attack. I was ripping it off and just nothing was sticking as I was waiting for the right guys and it just wasn’t happening.