Sunday, February 20, 2011

And we're off!

A pictorial post, for a lazy Sunday afternoon..


1 more sleep until we're off on one of these -

Destination? -


Apparently I might come across some of these?




Going to do a bit of this -


Over some of these (just hopefully not snowy..) -


Might check out some of the locals -



And when the week is done? Definitely some of these -





Friday, February 11, 2011

NZ - 10 more sleeps!

Well time is moving rather fast, and it’s now less than 2 weeks until the NZCT Womens Tour of NZ begins!


If the events Media Releases are anything to go by, this Tour is set to have the strongest field in its history, with HTC Highroad one of the headline teams. There’s also 35 Aussie’s heading over, including riders from all National and State institutes, and I’m sure all of the local NZ Talent will be on show too!

I was fortunate enough to get a spot on the Victorian TDT R.A.C.E Team after an untimely injury put one of the girls out for the race – Hoping the back mends soon Vic!! I’m super excited to be racing with Chloe, Sarah, Delphine, Miffy & Clare, all who I know are super strong riders and we'll hopefully make a good showing. Plus it’ll make that much more fun getting to race with a great group of girls that I already know!

TDT RACE Team before the NRS Canberra Tour 2010
Heading over a couple of days early to catch up with Bender in Windy Wellington. She's promised to take me to the best Sushi shop ever, so I can't wait! Will be interesting to see if it's possible that anywhere is better than Momoco..

Friday, February 4, 2011

So, what you been up to?

Well, it's been a month since Bay Crits. A Busy Busy month with a really disappointing Nationals Road Race, a week of being sick, a week in awesome RADelaide, and then back to the real world of working and training and early mornings.

Starting with Nationals - I had a great weekend. A bad race, but the rest was fun. Stayed with Ingrid @ a Big4 Caravan Park, although almost didn't as when we arrived we found out I'd royally stuffed up the booking and had booked for Feb! Thankfully they had a cabin still, or we'd have been screwed! Andy D came up the night before to help us out and be support, he even cleaned my bike for me! Thanks Andy!


Carbo Loading - Summer Style - on the way to Ballarat!
#inthebox

So to cut a long story short, the attack of the day went on Lap 3, and I was - not fit enough, not strong enough, not positioned well enough etc etc etc to be able to hang on to the main peloton. Whilst I wasn't expecting to win, or possibly even finish, I would have liked to have at least made it half way.
I know I could have kept rolling around, but at the time didn't have the desire to, so pulled the pin into the 4th lap. Weak? Yes, but I've learnt from it and will build on it and be back next year for a real crack.
In hindsight, for where I was at, doing all 4 of the Bay Crits probably wasn't the best idea. But to know if something works for you or not, you have to try it!

From Nationals I was to have a couple of days off and get straight back into it knowing that NZ was coming up. Well my body had other ideas, and after 2 days off it though - Wow! Time for a rest! OK, now you can get sick. So chest infection time, only 3 days before I was due to go to Adelaide for a week of racing and fun. Crap! Onto the Antibiotics. I was due to race on the Sunday and Monday in the Rendition Homes Santos womens cup, so on Sunday morning when I still wasn't right I was having doubts. By this time I'd started 5 races for the year and not managed to finish any of them, and my confidence was hanging by a thread. I left the decision up to Super Coach. Start or not? "Do It" was the answer. So I did it. And I finished. It wasn't pretty, but I got there. Finally! Day 2, much of the same. 2 finishes. I was back in business.
Race 1 - Rendition Homes/Santos Womens Cup on the same Circuit the ProTeam mens race was on that evening.

There was a 3rd race on the Wednesday, which I didn't finish, yet most didn't. A break of 5 went early and being basically a square hotdog circuit and less than 600m long. I lasted 12 minutes, which seems bad, yet looking at the power data the race was basically the same as Williamstown, but I lasted 50% longer. Big Improvement! :-)
The rest of the week was mostly just fun. We rode out to the KOM point on each day, watched the race, came back & had post ride Boost Juices and Sushi, went swimming at Glenelg Beach and the nightly Gelati from Gelatissimo!


So since then it's been back to the real world. With no trip planned between ADL and NZ, it's 4 whole weeks of normal working and training. Lots of pre 6am wake ups, and pre 10pm bedtimes.. I'll sure miss getting up at 8am each morning!



It was good to get back to SKCC and race this past weekend though! The Annual SKCC Womens Feature Race with big prize money on offer was on Sunday and as usual all the local big guns rocked up. It was a great race, and the first I've done in a while where I felt like I was actually racing as opposed to hanging on for grim death. I did some chasing, I did some attacking, I basically flogged myself as hard as I possibly could, to see how far I could go. In the end, the last 3-4minutes were back to hanging on, but I was happy with that. All the training is starting to pay off. Lucky! Because I leave for NZ in a little over 2 weeks.. More on that later!