Dancing on the pedals

NSW ITT Championships
Somersby to Calga, 21.5km
26th July 2009
Overcast, but still- perfect for a TT

It is funny where you get your inspiration from when you're squeezing the last of what you've got to get over the pinch before the finish line. Being le Tour time, I found myself focusing on images of Contador "dancing on the pedals" (in the words of Phil Liggett) to urge myself over the top. Also the thought that it was only a pursuit left on the other side helped as well, odd how I break things in to track dimensions as well!

Today was one of the rare times in a bike race that all things come together. Although I did fail at reading this morning and timed my warm up to finish for a start time 30 minutes before I was actually away! Ooops! In the end I don't think that was the worst thing in the world I was incredibly relaxed and focused, rather than wasting energy being nervous and fretting.

I think the cow was a bit bemused about it all!

From the start I was comfortable on the weapon and was finding it easy to pace myself and hold a good speed. Conscious of the few pinches of the course, I kept an eye on power output to make sure I had something for the final nasty pinch and focused on holding good form.

Always a highlight- I looked down in a 60km zone to find I was speeding! Looked down a little bit later to find I was holding 71kph :D There was also the 6 people that I went past, which is always a nice feeling in TT.

Passing people in front of me, always makes it more enjoyable! (sorry Imogen!)

In the end it turned out that I had ticked all my boxes today- I'd been aggressive, I'd held good form and I had found that little bit extra to really finish off the race. One very happy bike rider! All that remained was for the official times and positions to be determined. My SRM was telling me sub 32 minutes, with an average speed of 40.3kph, but I wanted to see the official results before I got too excited.

After a bit of a wait- something was wrong with the electronic timing- we had confirmation of my data and the podium was decided. Gold, by 1 min 10 seconds, can't complain about that! What makes me the happiest about this podium is that it was at this race that I had my most spectacular fail last year (see here). Congratulations to Sarah Roy and India McLean on a fine effort for the rest of the podium. Also congratulations to Mitch Lovelock-Fay for gold in U19 and to Pothole for silver in MMas2. Commiserations to Sue Powell who copped a flat 4km in, pretty sure you were on form for a cracker Sue!

Special thanks to Dean Redzic and Pothole as my coaches for the preparation for this event; Lyn Heritage and Glenn Doney for their ongoing support; Mick and the boys at OnyaBike Belconnen; NTID program; and Matt for being super! And special thanks to Sian Mulholland for helping me out to improve my position.

L to R: Sarah Roy, me, India McLean

More photos here (including previous races as well)

Wanted...

A jersey that says:

Unauthorised wheel suckers will not be tolerated.
Do a turn or back off!

It is a pet hate of mine to have people I don't know sit on my wheel and not offer to do a turn. Mostly it is when I am riding to work when it annoys me the most. Generally it is a guy sitting on and usually I am on my fixxie!
Although there was a guy trying to hang on today when we were motorpacing along the highway, he didn't last long though, I kept calling the moto up, hehehe :D

I don't mind if you want to share the ride, some of my best rides home have been two-up TTs along Adelaide Ave, but it is just not right to just suck a wheel! Especially when the wheel you are sucking makes it obvious you are not welcome, for example slowing down to painfully slow or riding in the gutter, or both together!

If your excuse is that you think you are superior to the wheel you are sucking, knock yourself out and go past, it will make no difference to first wheel riding along and they won't have you free loading off them!

I believe this is a way of life in Italy... drop over to Vicki's blog to read about her experience.

OK, rant over! I feel better now :)

Fortune Favours the Brave

DBR Australia ACT Women and Juniors Tour
NRS Event
Stage 4: 71.8 km RR
Sunday 5th July
Still Windy!

At the start of the day I was 20th on GC. Whilst not exactly outstanding, it was definitely better than I was expecting. My goal today was to finish as close to this as possible.

It also occurred to me that this was only my 3rd complete stage race. Wonder what I have actually been doing with myself...

The course was similar to Saturday's stage. Out along Uriarra Road all the way to the Homestead, U-bolt and back to Coppins Crossing Rd, to the end of that, U-bolt and then back along Uriarra Rd for 10km to the same turn around as yesterday and then back to SFP. Lots of ups and downs and the false flat which doubles as a wind tunnel!

The bunch had dwindled from Saturday, which most of us weren't unhappy about, but the pace at the start was rather pedestrian and I found myself getting cold and bored... time to mix it up a bit. At about 3km in, I manoeuvred my way to the front of the bunch and went for an attack. I wasn't sure what the bunch was going to do, I wasn't really a threat to overall GC and in the conditions it would take a superhuman effort to stay away all day. On a glance back the bunch hadn't reacted, nice, figured I'd keep digging. Next check Jemma O'Brien was on my wheel- cool, misery loves company!

The two of us continued to swap off through Uriarra Crossing, taking the QOM points, and then along with false flat. Today this stretch was a wind tunnel at its finest. We had to work so hard to even keep moving along this section, let alone hold the bunch off! In the end the bunch caught us at the turn around. That was a lot further than I expected!

Back along the towards the Crossing, I tried to sit in and recover, but that was made difficult by the wind. You know sometimes it is just better to keep rolling through... the things you learn hey?! Then I managed to get stuck behind a dodgier wheel than mine on the descent into the crossing, bugger, lots of ground lost! Determined not to drop too far down GC, I forced my legs to go "fast" up the first of the three sisters. It is easier to do this when there are people in front of you to chase! On the second sister I even managed to pass the spares car!! (Yeah, small things I know!)

A small group of us came together, including Chloe McIntosh, India McLean, Delphine Astier, Heather Evans and B-grade winner Zoe Watters, and we stayed together for the rest of the race, encouraging/willing/dragging each other to the end of the race! We were all creeping towards the end. Myself, maybe I spent a few too many biccies on my adventure up the road, but you never ever know if you never ever go!

As expected there were lots of lessons learnt today. My hot tip from this weekend is: get the little things right and the big things will be easier!

In the end I was 25th on GC, (18th if you take the U19s out) which I am happy with. I was also 4th on QOM which makes me smile :)

From here, it can only improve.

Thanks to ACTAS for the support over the weekend- Glenn, Brent & Sian. Thanks to Pothole and Dean for preparation. Thanks to Matt for putting up with a grumpy cyclist!

Um, excuse me legs, we are RACING

DBR Australia ACT Women and Juniors Tour
NRS Event
Stage 2: 40 min + 3 lap Criterium
Saturday 4th July
Temperature dropping and WINDY! (Typical Canberra weather.)

One word, BRUTAL!

At the start of the week, I was totally gee'd for this stage. I knew I was under prepared for the RRs but I had high hopes for this stage. Alas, my legs weren't on the same wave length as head or my heart. No matter how hard I willed them they just lacked spark! Then once my legs didn't want to fire, my head started to over think the race, and I was worrying too much about trying to make sure I was a good position instead of getting myself into said position... vicious cycle! The good news is, I know where the problems are and I reckon I know how to fix them, so bring on some more racing already! In a nutshell, I am just going to think of it as lack of "match practise".

Throw into this mix a bit of laying down on the hot mix, the race being neutralised, what felt like cyclonic winds and the temperature going sub-zero (apparently?!) while we were on course! After rolling around for 5-10 minutes while the crashed riders got up and back on the bike, we were freezing when the race was restarted. There was also comments post race that suggested that the commissaires may have been a bit generous to the riders in the break away with the gap they gave them before we restarted. Oh well, hard to say what affect that really had.

In the end, the bunch was literally blown apart into several smaller bunches with front group taking a lap towards the end. The wind was coming straight across the SFP crit course with the only respite being around the very top corner, and the worst of it as a block headwind through the bottom section! Most of the riders ended up getting pulled off the course with 2 laps to go (myself included) or DNFing of their own accord. Amy Cure was incredibly impressive in the breakaway and then attacking her little group to take the win by about 20 seconds.

You might surprise yourself

DBR Australia ACT Women and Juniors Tour
NRS Event
Stage 2: 38km RR
Saturday 4th July
Sunny, little breezy.

With the ITT out of the way, it was time to relax, sit back in the bunch and get to the end of the tour. The rest of the stages were just for "training".

It was a big field with the U19, Elite and B grade women all combined for the tour. I think there was close to 70 of us. (OK, compared to some of the races some of you are doing O/S that is not big, but for us that is a lot!) It would have been nice to have been able to use both sides of the road, but we weren't, so we had to suck it up and try and move through the bunch as best as possible. Although staying on the left of the line was more difficult for some than others and the commissaires weren't at all happy with us- and certainly let us know about it on Sunday morning. I believe there were a couple of crashes in the bunch in this stage, I know of at least one as they touched my wheel and came down.

The course was out and back and then left hand turn out and back and into the finish- kind of like a big L. The plan was to be at the front at the first U-bolt. Didn't quite go to plan and ended up a bit too far back when the kick went up the 3 sisters- not that I was ever going to stick with that! (Do I really need to remind you that I have been solely focused on TT and haven't really done any hills lately?!) But despite my poor position at the turn, I promptly set about making up positions and trying to limit the gap to the front of the race.

The little group I was with managed to hold our gap to the leaders until they headed for home after the second U-bolt. In the end I won the kick for our small bunch, finishing 19th, 2:39 on the front bunch. I can't be unhappy with that, I had expected to lose a lot more time and be much further down. Although, I will definitely be trying to improve my hill climbing!

Patiently Impatient

DBR Australia ACT Women and Juniors Tour
NRS Event
Stage 1: 15.5km ITT
Friday 3rd July
Temperature dropping and WINDY! (Typical Canberra weather.)

After last weekend's showings I was pretty gee'd for the TT stage of the tour. I knew I wasn't in much form for the rest of the tour with all the commotion at the start of the year, but I was going to have a red hot go at this stage.

Race prep was pretty much perfect. I had the day off work to go through all my pre-race habits and was fairly well set when 2:33:30 rolled around. I would be lying if I said I hadn't been nervous about this event, I always find that with the "big ones", and even more so on home soil- something about local expectations...

Going through the motions of the warm up

The wind out on course made it incredibly tough at times, it seemed to be coming constantly either as a cross or head wind, never did it seem to be a tailwind! So typical of Canberra!

At the time I felt I was riding pretty well, but in retrospect, I am not that happy with it. There are few things that I need to work on and by no stretch of the imagination was this my best TT. I know that this was but a small step on the way to target events, but as always, never happy unless there is at least a podium! Patiently impatiently!! If this was the absolute best, then there would be no point persisting, but this result encourages me to persist and keeps me driven.

In the end I finished 6th overall, 4th for the Elite women's category.

Out of the start gate.

I was glad to have my long sleeve skinsuit and knee warmers on!
(Photos from Andrew Stainley, ACTAS)

Pretty sure a gel on the start line is a warm-up... right?

Goulburn CC ITT 37km
Windellama (Road)
Cold, wind increasing, rain just holding off until we finished!
28 June 2009

Backing up after the performance at Dapto involved an overnight stay in Goulburn to reduce the amount of time spent on the road.

After careful planning of what time we needed to leave to get to the start, which I believed to be in Windellama, a small locality about 30km from Goulburn, we settled into our hotel room to watch the Wallabies thrash the Italians.

The problem really started when we couldn't find anyone else that looked like they would be racing a bike around Windellama. A quick phone call back to Canberra to get contact numbers in Goulburn revealed that we were completely in the wrong place and in fact were 30 km from the start line!! And about 30 minutes from scheduled start time!! Thankfully they called the race organisers and let them know we were on our way.

Record timing to get into my skinsuit, register and wheels on bike. I had about 1 minute to get to the line by the time I was dressed. I rapidly inhaled my gel and got to the line. Fingers crossed that I wasn't too stiff from yesterday and that I would get through this rather long TT!!

I made the conscious decision to ride conservatively on the outward leg to try and get myself warmed up. Despite this "conservative" approach I still posted a pretty tidy split and felt remarkably good. I even managed to remember to drink and feed, something I am unaccustomed to doing as most of the TTs for women are less than 30km.
Prize for winning B-grade=>

The return leg was more aggressive and I was happy to record a negative split, even with the ever strengthening cross-head wind! I had set myself a target of 1 hour for this course, without any real basis, and was happy to have gone 24 seconds over that target given the "warm-up" I had had, and the fact that I was backing up after smashing myself at Dapto!

The SRM data, and the follow car driver (Thanks Matt) both said that I had ridden smoothly and consistently- you can't ask for much more! And the final results said that I had posted the 2nd fastest time of the day (which was fastest female, but I was the only one!) and I had accidentally burgled B-grade (I never know when racing away from home!!).

Thanks to the Goulburn CC for a very well run race and friendly faces, despite the miserable weather! The post race food was most welcome!

Results:

Windeallama Road Time Trials - 36km

28th June 2009

Place	Grade	Name	Time
1	b	Rebecca Barwick	1.00.25.30
1	a	William Lind	58.42.10
3	b	Phil Katen	1.05.40.79
2	b	Mark Gibson	1.05.24.52
3	a	Jason Mahoney	1.00.31.44
5	a	Noel Barrett	1.04.07.19
	a	Kerry Baxter	1.04.12.82
2	a	Jerry Gilchrist	1.00.28.07
4	a	Ben Hay	1.02.35.65
4	b	Adam Lambert	1.08.54.37
1	c	Chris Bushell	1.15.18.29

Course details:

ITT(i)S the season...

Illawarra Cycling Club ITT, Dapto
Saturday 27 June 2009
Warm and sun, with rain threatening!

I have a soft spot for this course. It was the first course that I raced my TT bike over last year (see this post) and being able to race on it about 12 months later gave me a good opportunity to gauge improvement.

According to the club website the race was meant to be 36 km but after a quick word to the organisers I convinced them that one lap of the course (~18 km) would be sufficient for me!

I was the 8th one away and the first one home. There is something very satisfying about that! And my time was 30 seconds than last years! Nice! According to the "official" results, I was third fastest over the 1 lap version and fastest female. And to top it off, the power output according the SRM was awesomely and consistent. Sweet!

There might be some form there after all!! :D



The course profile looks like this, if you are interested: