Fred Ogle Memorial Ride

With the postponements K2 and Taupo, we were looking for another ride to do this year, having only ridden the 100k Flyer at the start of October (postponed from it's original date in April) and Trace and I rode the TDR in January. I found the Fred Ogle ride on Facebook and with it being located up near Whanageri and only $65 entry, we decided to give it a go.

From the Website: 

The Fred Ogle and Lynley MacDonald Ride Events have taken place since 2008 and are a key event in the Northland cycling calendar and each year the focus of the event is to bring renewed road user awareness to cycling safety. 

The ride is mostly on backroads, in reasonable condition apart from some fresh seal and the odd rough cow crossing sections. Forecast was good for the day but when we arrived there was some very light drizzle in the air but this didn't hang around long and the day quickly warmed up. 

I started the ride with Trace and Carl and it was a neutral start behind a car rolling at 20kph (i.e no waves, just one mass start). No-one seemed to know when the flag would drop, and when it did at about 4km in, we were on a slight rise and the bunch split to pieces. Carl and I got across any gaps but Trace didn't, so that made for long day out for her with not many good riders left to work with. Our bunch split again on the first big hill 20kms in and Carl and I got into the 3rd group on the road containing about 20 riders. 

We rode with this group till the end, picking up a few stragglers from the groups in front. I felt great until the half way turn around, when the day was really warming up (avg temp 21, max 25). I thought I could cramp at any moment from this point but whenever I needed to dig out an effort on a climb or rolling a turn on the front, I managed it. 

The group mainly worked well together but the pace was up and down... high pace on the hills and some real easy moments on flat sections (which was probably what saved me from cramping). With about 10kms to go, a few riders clipped off the front, going solo for glory but I was definitely content in the bunch. The usual sprint finish started early with a downhill last 2kms but generally our group came to the finish all together. Carl put in a strong sprint to move up in the last 500mtrs and I sat on his wheel ;-) so it was great to finish another race together. Don't know our actual finish positions etc as we didn't have timing chips, only race numbers on the front of our bikes... but I'm guessing around the top 50 places. 

So in summary, Nice course, good weather.. would definitely do this ride again.