Firstly, my off season, you know relax, go surfin’, party, dirt bikin’ with the off-road set who happen to turn up in full body armour ready for a jousting contest; as you have guessed, me in lycra off-loaded by the mother of all rocks on an impossible down hill out the back of Menai, Sydney. I end up with a knee the size of the rock and all of a sudden I’m trying to rehabilitate impact tendonitis 8 weeks out from the Australian champs in the middle of January, not having even commenced base training. Finally able to get back on the bike in mid December and only decided at the last minute to compete in the Aussie’s as a training ride and as it happened that is exactly what it was, one of the easiest 97km races for some time and virtually gifting it to one of the best sprinters in the world, Kate Bates; hopefully we exceed the 33kph average pace next year and take a leaf out of Jess McLean’s book and have a go. I finished 18th in the sprint for third some 12s behind the winner, after being run off the road 500m out; that won’t happen again either. By the way, thanks to James and Vivian Doherty for accommodating us for our stay in Adelaide; their hospitality and support made the stay really enjoyable.
Next race was the Geelong Women’s Tour and World Cup in late February, but before that I can’t pass up on mentioning the Jindabyne tour with my Eurobodalla club. It’s really just a training camp, but you get any group of cyclists away on a weekend and the pace is going to be on at sometime and in the mountain environment the challenges just jump at you; we experienced it all strong hot headwinds, long grinding kilometres, near freezing temperatures and of course the climbs, you just had to make the commitment. It was great to see the cyclists new to the sport taking on all these elements like seasoned combatants, very motivating and all I needed to prepare for Geelong the following week.
Big thanks to Key Building and Tim Devlin’s South Coast Academy of Sport located somewhere in the region, I think. The team consisting of Laura Bortolozzi, Belinda Diprose, Vicki Eustace, Rachel O’Connell and myself were struggling to find a sponsor for the event until Tim came along with his offer, so thanks again.
So what’s the first thing that goes wrong for a team at the beginning of a tour? The race kit doesn’t turn up and the second thing? One of your riders has to leave due to unforseen circumstances [Sarah, hope all is going alright for you]. So we are a little behind the 8 ball before the first ITT stage. Can anything else go wrong, well when the number one women’s team doesn’t like the start order of the ITT then they get it changed the night before with every team supposedly being informed, except us, so as we are lounging around as you do before a race munching away on the carbos etc, they call our team to the start line, oh hell! A 6km gut buster in twenty minutes rather than the 90 minutes we assumed. Not the greatest preparation, but we are minnows in the sport and you just get on with it and thanks to Mark we all looked pretty good in our Moruya Bicycles strip.
Stage 2 and the gear turns up! Tim’s mobile bill must be huge and I don’t know what he was muttering into the phone every time he walked off into the distance over the previous 36hours. We look even better, well the crew think so [Tim, Michael and Steve] and the 140 women on an 800m crit course doesn’t seem anywhere near as chaotic as first thought. As it turned out just about all riders stayed upright; Vicki was our highest place rider and finished the day in GC contention 55s behind after stage two; Rachel, Belinda and myself missed the divide in the field and were some 5 minutes behind by the end the day and me further back with my lousy ITT. Laura was struggling obviosusly still feeling the effects of a virus from the week before.
Stage 3: a road race on a 15km relatively flat circuit, havoc and mayhem! Firstly, the police motor cycle escort hitting ma and pa kettle head on. in the wrong place at the wrong time; our biker did not look too happy as we navigated the scene and then it seemed crash after crash as teams constantly jockeyed for position to lead out their sprinters for the points every lap. Rachel rode brilliantly gaining places in the sprints and if it wasn’t for the carnage in the final 5km with bikes flying through the air and right across the entire road we may have been able to get her into a position to actually contest the final sprint, but no way through the mess. We all finished with the winners’ time, no change to GC. An aside: you just know a rider is out of her depth when she crashes bring down other riders while she is reacting to a crash on the other side of the rode, things are tough enough without that kind of ineptness.
Stage 4, my stage: finally a climb, Mt Wallace, only about a kilometre, but it is vertical and my chance to get some time into GC. An unbelievably fast 42kph pace for the 50km to the bottom of the climb and the first sprint on the narrowing road, excellent planning organisers. You guessed it, more carnage; Rachel placed in the sprint moving her into 7th in the points, Vicki went down in the following melee with riders trying to get to the front for the ascent and I got caught up in the mess with my rear wheel taken out. The guys are stuck back at the crash looking for Vicki who has up and gone again and mean while I am falling off the back of the main group with a damaged wheel. The change was quick when it arrived but too late. I flew up the climb [all adrenalin, I imagine] having to bang on the cars in the convoy to move aside eventually making contact with the last of three groups who were in no mood to work despite my best efforts to motivate them, so that’s where my tour stayed and ended, up the places in GC, but no better than last year 75th; 2007 may be better. Vicki did really well and protected her GC like a pro 32nd; Rachel a great result placing 7th in the points classification; Belinda finished outside of the allocated time, quite unfairly I believed as she gutsed it out solo to the end after the Wallace ordeal, unlike others who opted to quit. Laura had a nightmare ride with pedal trouble from the outset and exhausted after being motorpaced for 20km back to the convoy with no energy to fight her way through the cavalcade of cars.
Geelong World Cup: this is what my coach had me primed for 120km of solid pace, a hill climb every lap [7], my Jindabyne legs should come into play and he was right, felt good for the whole race. Such an important race with so many of the world’s top riders here, 144 starters, and no one interested in the sprints. Several early crashes to unsettle things, Vicki in trouble with rear wheel flat but great motor pacing from her had her back in the mix after 15km, then the action really got going in the last three laps with several concerted efforts by the Kiwis, Nurnberger and the Aussies trying to get free, but T-mobile all the time in the mix holding things together and Key Building/SCAS were there as well. with Belinda, Vicki and I determined to be there for the finish, especially after surviving the break in the field at the halfway point responding to one of the many attacks. The final lap had 45 riders still tight but Onone Wood soon had us all grabbing a wheel in her bid for the line on the last climb. We were all struggling to stay on and if you did not have team around you then your race was virtually over, Vicki though doing her best to keep attached and move me up the line, but realistically no way to overtake the incredible pace set by the pro teams. From where I was there was no 7s gap in the finish bunch but the officials deemed it so and I finished 35th, Vicki 40th and Belinda 63rd only a minute behind, a great result after a disappointing tour earlier in the week. Rachel finished 8min down, her sprint success in the tour taking its toll on the day. And the guys? Tim Devlin, Steve Brennan and Michael O’Connor, I think they won all their events moving up to 9th in GC, taking out the off-road prize, the roundabout gong and all without a bingle, well almost anyway and their assistance was greatly appreciated.
So that’s seemingly my international year over and I can get back to some normal training for the state and national races. It would be nice to head off with the tour and just cycle; I don’t think it would take too long getting up to pace doing nothing but train and race. However, I have made the commitment to work and continue my university studies in sonography, so home based for the next two years and trying to keep a balance.
That’s my season so far and its heading towards April and the Canberra tour, hopefully I can crank up the Pro disc that Mark got in for me and not be so far behind after the ITT. Keep you posted, ride safe. Jemma
