PDCC PK Cycles Serpentine Handicap

After participating in my first handicap several weeks I was keen to ride another one. I quite enjoy the standard road races but it's good to mix it up every so often. This handicap was 5 laps of the dead flat Serpentine road race course.

Several groups were let off before my name was called. I was in a group of seven riders with (I was to find out later) a 5 minute & 30 seconds head start on scratch. After a kilometre or so of fluffing about we got ourselves organized and starting rolling through. We were managing 39kph and I was happy we were rolling rather than pulling turns.
Sometime after the first lap the pace was too hot for Clint and he disappeared. Three quarters of the way round the second lap, our group reeled in a bigger group that had started off nine minutes. We didn't have the firepower to just blow past them so things were a messy for a time after the junction. Quite a few from this group managed to hang on and some integrated into the roll through. It was here I started to struggle as we headed out on the 3rd lap. Not being very experienced with handicaps I was a bit suprised that the riders from the group ahead of us seemed to have more legs than I thought they might. Some had dropped off but others were quite fresh it would seem.
Approaching the finish to the third lap I popped. I'd spent the last half lap having to get out of the saddle just to keep on and it proved too much. I drifted off the back and spent most of the fourth lap by myself save for passing a few fellow stragglers. I thought I was doing ok, checking behind from time to time and couldn't see the scratch markers, when they appeared seemingly out of nowhere. It was a large group and I entertained the possibility of getting on for about ..oh, a good four or five pedal strokes :) before realising it wasn't going to happen. They were doing better than 42kph on the home straight and I couldn't hold that.
My fifth lap consisted of me chasing Kelly, who had just popped off the back of the express, for a bit before catching her and riding to the finish with her and two guys. There was no sprint for our quartet and we rolled over the line.
It was a tale of two races for me - 39kph average before being dropped and then two laps at 35kph. Happy that I'd had a good hit out but dissapointing I wasn't able to hang on to the bigger group that formed after we caught the nine minute group. The rain that I was expecting never eventuated either.

1hr 11mins
44km