Club Races
Monaghan is Back (... a bunch next week!)
Rifle Butts Short Course, Horsham, Sunday 26th October 2008

	Danny Monaghan

A tail wind start meant high speeds as Grampians Vets cyclists tackled the 46km Rifle Butts course last Sunday, starting and finishing from the Wool Factory on Golf Course Road, Horsham.

The first warm conditions for this summer racing period, with 25 degrees at 8am, along with a moderate head wind on the final leg back to Horsham, made conditions a little testing.

Meg Parnaby led the field away, riding from 14 and a half minutes. Having raced the 70km Camperdown to Warrnambool the day before, Meg did well to hold off the 6 and a half minute riders Peter Mayo, Tom Eldridge, Danny Monaghan and Sean Prins until the 30km mark.

These riders then worked well together to hold off the following bunches until the final kilometer of the race.

Riding off 2 minutes, second scratch riders Steve Monks, Peter Parnaby, Harvey Lang and Gerard O’Brien combined well to hold the scratch riders Tim Schneider, Alan Barnett, Chris Scott, Frank Kean and Drew Heard at bay until 35km into the race, when these two bunches combined.

This combined bunch then worked hard into the wind on the long leg back to Horsham, finally catching the tail end of the straggly lead bunch with about 1km to go.

However, Monaghan and Mayo had escaped from the rest of the lead group of riders just before the scratch riders caught up, and managed to power home ahead of the rest of the field with Monaghan crossing the line first ahead of Mayo.

Monks was third with Chris Scott recording the fastest time of the day of 1 hour 14 minutes.