The Barkly Agencies Tour is a 2 day event where 3 clubs come together and compete for the trophy. While its certainly not like city racing, the boys and gals are not shy to put some hurt into a race, so I found out

So I haven't raced for 8 months, I'd only really decided 3 days before I was going to put my name forward for the club. 2 days before I paid for the licence and picked up a Jersey, worked out a ride up there and some accommodation. We left Alice at 1pm on Friday and pulled into Tennant Creek around 6:30pm. On the way we passed through the Devils Marbles, what a cool place that is ! We stayed at some 3 star place, very expensive, very very basic but at least it had a hot shower ! After dinner, from the Red Rooster that was part of the BP petrol station we adjourned to the room and bunked down for the evening. Well we didn't know there were a bunch of racers in the unit next door that were boasting how they were going to smash up A grade.....hmm, this was interesting !
The TT started at 11:00am sharp, I managed to pull rider "26"... (I wonder who got 22

Next is the A grade road race, our club had almost the top 5 TT spots so strategy was we were going to launch attacks to wear the group down and whoever was feeling strong would ride off the front with another rider. This was 78km with 36km of nasty headwind. This group was very very twitchy, our club launched a few attacks but we were pretty well covered. Myself and another rider managed a small break but we were quickly wheeled in, I knew this was going to be a sprinters finnsh and it was. Last 300m had a slight downhill, the Darwin club timed it well and had a great leadout, damn they were fast. So our club didnt get it right, we managed to pull 3rd, 5th and 6th (me being 6th), while not a bad effort we weren't overly thrilled.. DAMN SPRINTERS !!!!!!!!!!! After not racing for so long, cramps were really killing me, I wasnt fairing overly well so I think it was as good as I could do in this heat....
This morning was an early start, simply that many people had a 1000km drive home. A grade kicked off at 10:00am, 25 mins + 2 laps around the go-kart track. We went out to warm up and the track was pretty good considering, quite clean, few spots you could easily run wide but also some spots you could pass people safely. There was a nice straight but it was into a howling easterly wind, this I'm thinking was the place to try a break away. So after warmup (some boys brought rollers which put a little more uncertainty into our rag tag group

BBQ and presentation that was organised by the Alice Springs Cycling club was excellent, sponsors were great and the competition from the other 2 clubs was pretty strong. We managed to keep the trophy in Alice for another year, good outcome....The competition was really good as I said, not city racing but non the less very competitive. Some serious carbon weaponry this weekend especially this one guy that had the new SRAM 60/80 wheelset, pure bike pr0n !
The suffering I learnt at the hands of the LIfecycles team certainly helped me today !!
Sandman back in Alice
