Twin Peaks Open

Saturday 24th March 2001

Jason Kelly

The Twin Peaks Open is a one day, three stage event, which starts and finishes in Palmerston North. All riders start the road race stages together and prize money this year was awarded for the first five places over all three stages, in each stage and in each grade of Senior Men, Under 19 men, Vet men and Women.

The weather was fine and sunny with temperatures in the low to mid 20s. There was a light wind but nothing of any great consequence. The total field was 37 riders, 12 of which were Ramblers.

Starting in Palmerston North, the first stage was a 61km road race which travelled through Ashhurst, Colyton, back through Ashhurst and then up and over the Saddle Road to finish at an old hall on the northern side of Woodville.

The bunch stayed together until the first hill climb in Valley Road. This hill is a reasonable length and gradient and I found myself in the middle of the field, just drifting off the front bunch. Across the top, a few riders began a brief chase to rejoin the bunch and after a short period, the majority of riders re-joined the main bunch.

From there to the Saddle Rd, there were some attacks but no riders made a decisive break. As we reached the bottom of the Saddle Hill, one unfortunate rider punctured. The Saddle Road can be compared to a longer Te Mata Peak and inevitably, the stronger riders went off the front, the main bunch stayed largely together and I found myself slowly drifting out the back. On reaching the summit, the bunch was out of sight and I rode the descent with just a couple of riders in sight.

The downhill stretch has a number of speed warning signs on the corners. One of the later ones appears to be a joke as it was substantially slower than the rest but even I went considerably faster and safely through the corner than the indicated speed!

The finish of the first stage is just off the end of the descent and I found myself about 3 minutes behind the leader and about 1m30s behind the main bunch. My time was 1hr 44m 30s at an average speed of 35.2km/h. Several Ramblers took top 5 placings in the stage. The total vertical climbing in this stage over the Saddle Road was about 789 metres (Te Mata Peak is about 400m from Hastings).

The second stage is a 6.9km out and return individual time trial. The course starts down a  gentle slope which gives impressive early speeds. Not being a time trial specialist and bearing in mind the stage to come, I rode conservatively for one of the slowest times in the field. On overall time, I now found myself in the tail end of the field. Gareth Aplin was 3rd, Andrew Bott 4th and other Ramblers were just outside the top 10 with some further down the field.

The highlight of the time trial was Peter Halstead returning from the course and announcing he had completed the course in 9 minutes flat! After a bit of prodding, he stated that he actually had no idea what time he did for the course but 9 minutes sounded like a good time! Nine minutes sure was a good time that none of the riders achieved.

To get to the third stage, a controlled pace ride from the old hall to the southern side of Woodville was used. The stage started just on the edge of Woodville and headed out through Mangatainoka and Pahiatua before crossing the Pahiatua Track, turning right at Aokautere to head back to the main highway and turning left back onto the main highway at Ashhurst to finish back in Palmerston North where the race started.

The early pace in the third stage was fairly reasonable until a continuing series of attacks commenced. Some riders were obviously tired and dropped off the back as the bunch shrunk. Climbing one gentle climb, I thought the pace was fairly sedate until I looked at my speedo and saw it reading over 50km/h! After a number of attempts, Andrew Bott and Andrew Mildenhall rode away from the bunch.

Heading into the main climb on the Pahiatua Track, I positioned myself well to get over the top in the main bunch. Just as I thought I was safe, some fierce downhilling commenced and I found myself pedalling hard out downhill at over 70km/h. On reaching the bottom of the hill, a slight head / cross wind greeted us and the bunch continued to ride with some aggression.

After getting tired of being swung off the back of the bunch, I eventually fought my way to the front of the bunch up a small climb to be informed by Mark Coombe not to do any work at the front to protect Andrew Bott’s stage break which was now at about 2 minutes. Feeling reasonably tired and being 5 minutes down overall, I was easily convinced. However, one vet rider was desperate to catch the 2 leaders (he eventually finished 0.36 seconds down on the overall winner,  hence his frustration) and drove from the front of the bunch and used a wide array of colourful language to encourage others to help him. None did through Ashhurst and his temper frayed even more.

With about 5-10km to go, the time to the front two riders started to rapidly decrease and by the outskirts of Palmerston North, they were in sight. However, they hung on to finish just 4 seconds in front of the main bunch with Andrew Bott taking second place in the stage. From the main bunch sprint, Mike Annand secured 3rd place in the stage and Peter Cooke 4th. The total vertical climb in the third stage was approximately 533m with the distance of 68km covered in 1hr50m37s at an average speed of 36.9km/h.

The total ride for the day was just over 140km. As this was broken into three stages with rest times between each stage, it was not as difficult as it might sound. The final overall results were:

1st Peter Latham in 3hrs 42m 04s

3rd Gareth Aplin at 7.54s (2nd in under 19 Men)

4th Andrew Bott at 33.41s (1st in Senior Men)

11th Ben Knight at 1m33.35s

12th Peter Cooke at 1m55.22s

13th Phillip Burns at 2m00.16s

14th Mike Annand at 2m19.20s

17th Mark Coombe at 4m52.81s

18th Jason Kelly at 5m02.18s

21st Michael Head at 19m37.95s

27th Peter Halstead at 21m47.96s

29th Gavin Povey at 27m36.12s

DNF Murray Bassett