Last weekend was the Blackburn Cycling Club's 'Eildon Junior Tour' and I'd drawn the duty of race announcer for Saturday and general dogs body for Sunday.  We went up to stay at Bonnie Doon on Friday after I knocked off from work at Cycle Science, and arrived there in time to grab a few moments of the Tour before hitting the hay.  I'd taken the big Fuel EX8 up to do a lap of the Hurt Hill Loop with some hope of having time and energy to do it. Saturday  we were at Thornton running the individual time trial, being stage 1, and then the finish of stage 2, the road race, for J11's through to J17's.  A long, long day, I think we started work at around 8:30am for a 10:30 start for the ITT, and finished at around 5:30pm after wrapping up the road race.   I spent most of the day yapping away over the PA system, which many here will know I'm fond of, but it's also quite tiring, and in particular, I was standing up all day. 

It was quite cold so my ushanka and down jacket came in handy!  At the end we formed a little convoy and drove back to spend the evening at Bonnie Doon again.  I was way too tired to even think about Hurt Hill, but did briefly entertain the notion of a jaunt to the scoops under the Maroondah Hwy bridge, but even that idea was put to rest.  Dino and I fired up the barby, chilli chickenwings were dealt with but my big steak was off! I had to throw it away!  The agony! After a meeting with a new rider, it was again time to sleep, before having to be up again at 6:30 on Sunday to do it all again.
Sunday and we're at Eildon, I helped out Merv at the start line getting the J17s and J15s under way, before scooting over to the finish on the Eildon dam wall to do the PA again and call the finish of the Sunday stage.  After that, we ran around like headless chooks setting up for the final criterium, only to have rain cause it to be cancelled after the J11's completed their 10 minute crit.  I don't think anyone disagreed with Brad Robins' call on the conditions, Brad did a great job through the two days as chief commissaire. Pack up and go!  I had to be at DISC before 5:30 to get the DISC session happening.

It's great to see how quickly Carnegie-Caulfield have a race report up for their juniors.  You can see it here. We (Blackburn) were stretched pretty thin for this event and I don't think we had anyone available to do race reports. That's something CCCC does extremely well, and we can all learn from how they do it.

We made it in plenty of time, and the DISC session went well and I got a few laps in, so finally got a tiny bit of riding in for the weekend.  At the end of it, I wasn't able to lock up, the sliding doors to the velodrome had been locked open with a real key (I have a magnetic keypass) so I couldn't close the velodrome, and the CSV office was similarly locked shut with a key, so I couldn't turn off the lights either!  We called the council and let them know before heading for home via a Chinese takeaway.  Dozing through the first stage of the Tour in the Pyronees ... so tired ... Cadel's next big test is tonight, Hautacam ... Go Cadel!