Cycling: Tamworth quartet in the medals at state road championships

The trio, along with Tamworth Cycle Club stalwart Alan Spokes, competed at the state road championships at Gunning.

In what the Ash described as "horrible conditions" - cold, windy and wet - all four achieved podium finishes. Ash won gold in the women's Masters 1 road race, Spokes silver in the Masters 9 time trial and bronze in the road race, Deasey bronze in the under-23's time trial and Maidment bronze in the under-19s women's road race.

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It was Ash's second masters state road title after winning the race two years ago, before finishing third last year.

She said the race was quite slow "with everyone watching who was doing what".

She did make a couple of attacks, but they were mainly, as she joked, to "try and keep warm".

"Up any little hill I was just 'have a little spurt and get the legs warm'," she said.

In the end it came down to a bunch sprint, which she was happy for.

She then backed up in the elite race on Sunday, but unfortunately had to pull out after the first lap due to some gearing issues with her bike.

For Maidment it was another step in her development after making the transition from the mountain to the road a little over a year ago.

One of Tamworth's top mountain bikers she initially started doing some road cycling "for the fitness".

"There was no defining moment where I shifted. It kind of just happened," she said.

"I started racing on the road more and enjoying that more and shifted away from the mountain biking."

She hadn't really gone into the weekend with too many expectations. It was more about seeing where she is at compared to the other girls and getting an idea of what she needs to do for the nationals.

So it was a nice bonus to be among the medals.

Deasey was pretty happy with how he raced.

"A big target was the TT (time trial)," he said.

"We (he and new coach Nathan Elliott) did a lot of work and you've got to do a lot of specific work. They're different positions, different bikes, you've got to get used to it so it was good balancing the two."

He went on to finish 10^th in the road road after breaking away with another rider just over 10km in.

They rode for about 105km together out in front, but unfortunately got caught with 20km to go.

"And then just had no legs left after that," Deasey said.

Still looking towards the nationals he said he is "feeling good" coming out of the weekend, which was his first major race really since the Gunnedah-Tamworth back in June.

"The numbers I was doing were some pretty good numbers so hopefully we can build on top of that again for nationals and see what happens," he said.

Spokes only really entered as he was heading to Melbourne to pick up a new caravan and it was a good half-way stop.

That ended up being pushed back but he decided to still race.

"I had a good weekend's racing, I can't be disappointed," he said.

"I stuffed up the finish on Sunday to get the bronze medal.

"I thought two riders weren't in my age group so I didn't worry about them and they got first and second."

It was a similar scenario on Saturday. The last to start, he caught the four riders he thought he had to catch but actually had to catch five.

Despite the conditions the quartet said it was great to be back racing again.

"I was really happy to just pin a number on for the weekend," Ash said.

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