Brunswick Cycling Club

The Landlink team (women over 30 with some employment only need apply) travelled up to the capital on Thursday to race 4 stages over 3 days as part of the Kowaslki Women’s and Junior Tour. There were little tackers of 10 on restricted gears, up to U19 gals (on their way to South Africa for the Junior World Champs) and senior women, racing over the roads near Mt Stromlo, Uriarra and Coppins Crossing. And just in case you didn’t get to see enough of the same roads, we pretty much just cut laps of those surrounds all weekend. There were supposedly complete road closures though, which supposedly made it safer.

Suzanne Alway, Jenny MacPherson and I were a small but formidable team. JMac has had plenty of racing experience, and even though she’s now a member of the real community, with a job contributing to society (more than I can say for myself), she knows how to wield a sprint in anger and has plenty of stamina to control the bunch. Suze is less experienced, but did a fine job defending our lead all weekend. In Stage 1, I won the 16km TT by 2 minutes over 2nd place, which meant that I only had to finish in the front bunch for the remaining 3 stages, and the tour was won.

Stage 2 was brief (39km hilly road stage) but there were young’uns trying to grab QOM (Queen of the Mountain) points and show us the perks of weighing less than 55kg, so my climbing legs were tested and did not disappoint. Stage 3 was a crit around the superfast Stromlo circuit, and JMac ended up 2nd behind the local hero (which was quite uncoincidentally PC of her). We attempted a canny lead out trick, but the youngster isn’t junior National champ on the road and track for nothing! Stage 4 was sort of 2 x laps of Stage 2, and Jen and Suze did a great job for me, controlling the bunch and responding to attacks. I finished 3rd in the stage, and so won the tour overall by 1.25, after they had given time bonuses a-plenty to anyone from Canberra.

Despite coming out of a heavy training block, I am holding some promising power with 11 weeks til World Championships. All that climbing in North QLD and Goto Island (while on chief cheerleader duty for Mitch racing Ironman Japan 2 weeks ago) has been a good start, and now I’ll get a little more domestic racing in before leaving for Italy in late August. A year ago in this tour, I was 2nd in the opening TT, but then lost valuable time over the following 2 days’ hilly road stages, and finished 8th overall. Compared to racing tour of Flanders or Drenthe world cup, I had ample room on the road, far better positioning, and greater confidence going into these National series races.

I then repeated my dominant performance at ASADA’s anti-doping, a tent constructed by the sheltered workshop some distance over bushland from the start/finish area. Feeling no fear of the nightmarish Suisse episode (remember - dry as a chip?), I had ample fluid and even passed plenty of ml unnoticed onto the AIS trackkies. Hey, you try peeing in front of a stranger in a tilted portaloo in 4 deg weather! Then mock me.

A yellow leader’s jersey was passed my way, millions of dollars of prizemoney was divided by the team, and we then packed up our bikes, wheels, Mt Stromlo observatory post cards, and we headed home. A big thanks to Landlink, ACTAS, CycleEdge, Oakley, Shotz, CBD Cycles, Zipp and AIS. I raced for the first time on my new Teschner road frame, and it held up a treat.

Next on the calendar are plenty of local racing, with no excess baggage or airport runs required. On the 19th July is the Melbourne to Ballarat, followed the next day by the Victorian Club Teams Time Trial (where I am controversially trying to get start in the men’s team for Brunswick Cycling Club - I’ll compare notes with golfer Michelle Wie on how to handle the heckling on that one), and then the Victorian Championships in Ballarat in August.

Ciao! Bridie

This entry was posted by Admin on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Reports, Women.