Hospital race (fun ride)

When it comes to supporting your community and spreading a little love around, Angry comes up trumps always willing to stump up some cash for a chance to smash my fellow filthy roadies on the hills.
So on hearing about the inaugrual Hospital fun ride taking in a favourite of mine the Makara hill, I signed up.
Now a hospital ride is a bit of an oxymoran as road racing (I meant fun ride) is inherently a wee bit dangerous, just one crash would pretty much wipe out all charitable profits from the ride, but that thought didnt stop 250 other keeners showing up on a brisk sunday morning in Porirua.
I had cycled out from Karori with John and Malcolm meeting a few others along the way including my old mates Sean and Craigy with newspaper stuffed down my to keep out the cold.
The ride started promptly at 8am and with a police escort through to the end of Tawa everyone attempted to warm up as it was a touch nippy.
Along Middleton road the pace picked up and I was up front with 2 Pennys riders, 1 other on a rather nice carbon Colagno and a thursday hills nemisis Patrick.
Half way up Ironside road I turned around for a looksee and mostly everyone behind our group was gone so focused on the couple of guys ahead of me and enjoying the police escort.

The pace went on nicely around Makara and before you knew it we hit the bottom of Makara Hill, the pace initially was a bit slow so I chopped up a couple of gears and led the sprint up the hill to pour a bit of pain on for the others, but they where having none of this, so we bunched up a wee bit and cruised to the summit, Patrick had timed the ascent at 7mins 51sec from the church, not my PB but still not a bad effort considering we had come from Porirua.
Now the fun started, the descent down the other side was pretty fast and whipping up Karori road with a police escort (1 car and 2 motorbikes) was excellent the cops where stop everyone at the lights and intersections to give us free passage.
Through Marsden Village my lovely family where there cheering me on which was really awesome as it puts some lead back in your pencil. From there is was down Aro road at a frightening speed of 65kph, before going up Ohariu road and down Happy Valley road around the bays and heading back inland to the Hospital, was great to see Oli nearly ready with a camera catching this really awesome shot of my awesomeness as you can see my front wheel is really shiny. :)
Over a couple of hills we went and into the hospital grounds all finished in a time of 1 hour 24 minutes and a 2nd placing for Angry.. and a 1st for 25-40 category.

Moar glory for BLR.
Photos courtesy of http://www.roadcycling.co.nz/