Tour of NZ Wrap Up

After finally finding my camera cables, it's time for a bit of a race report on the NZCT Womens Tour of NZ..

Wow, what an experience. After a Meltdown in Krasna Lipa & a Broken Collarbone in Holland, I was hoping for 3rd time lucky in my attempt at finishing a UCI Stage race, and I finally did it. The experiences from those first 2 attempts help me get through my first 5 day stage race in one piece and I came home from Wellington extremely tired, but super super happy.

Waiting for Take Off!! Super Excited about the week ahead

After the bestest Ex (flatmate) in the world picked us up from the Airport, we ventured for our first view of this foreign land.. A quick trip to Penny Farthing Cycles in Wellington resulted in many laughs and a few 'essential' purchases. Coudn't believe my luck when I found a pink front light that matches my bike's colour scheme perfectly! The challenge of attending the next morning's bunch ride through the Hills surrounding Wellington was thrown down, but with the bunch meeting at 0615 and 5 days of racing looming, we opted for a sleep in and had to turn down the chance to show up the Kiwi boys and promised to come back another time to do so.

Then it was on to sample the New World supermarket for some food to get us through the week. This supermarket was one of the highlights of the whole trip!! With a massive wall of Pick N Mix called Alisons Pantry with Nuts, Fruits, Cereals and Lollies, we were in heaven and provided a good half an hours worth of entertainment to Bender with all of our 'OH MY GOD!' 'I've GOT to try that!!'

The Mega Licorice Allsorts were AMAZING! Regular sized on the left, Jumbo on the right..

The next day dawned drizzly and cool, but we set off for an easy roll around the Bay with some amazing scenery. We made the most of being able to cruise, knowing there wouldn't be much sight seeing in the next 5 days of racing other than the wheel in front, and our own bar tape.

 Travelling to Lower Hutt on the morning of the start of the Tour, we met up with our respective teams (Ingrid - Prime Estate, me TDT RACE) and then got down to business. The RACE girls, Kim and Murray had all had a horror trip over, with a 10 hour flight delay, Rental Car not being there, and then arriving at the hotel at 4am.. Starting the Tour on 3 hours sleep each wasn't exactly what was planned, but these girls are amazing and just did what they had to do to get through Day 1.

Pink Bits is Race Ready!

After only 3 hours sleep, Clare figured the best wake up would be to hit the rollers in the sunshine!

Basically the Tour was set to be 6 Stages over 5 days, including 2 Crits.. But UCI rules state no Crits in Tours, so these were still required to be raced, but didn't count for overall standings. There were quite a few sighs of relief when this was found out, as the final crit stage is rather selective and only 20 girls finished last year resulting in many DNF's for the Tour.

Throughout each stage of the Tour I learnt more and more. There are a couple of mistakes I keep making, that I really need to work on, but that will all come with time and practice. The girls we were racing have been doing this for years and things like positioning etc are second nature to them. One day I hope for that to be me.

Day 3 would have been the biggest learning curve, more so in what I can do. Having never punctured before in a race, when my front tire exploded as the peloton got in to chase mode to bring back a break, I could have easily panicked and given up. But at only 30k into a 90k stage, I wasn't keen on spending the last 2/3rds of the race out the back. So without fuss, I got a quick neutral wheel change, and set about the task of getting myself some wheel to suck! 6k later, I made contact, unfortunately at the base of the climb, so - back out the arse for another 2k until I was safely ensconsed in the bunch feeling rather chuffed with myself, but pretty stuffed too!

That evening was the first crit that didn't count, and I was surprised to find my legs didn't feel as bad as expected. Whilst most said it was 'Easy' etc, my power numbers said it was a reasonably solid race, with 4 away in a break for the last half of the race. At 3 to go I thought I'd try my luck at getting the final paying spot and had a crack off the front, but the legs weren't THAT good and I blew and was brought back in a lap later. Finished somewhere up nearish the front.

Day 4 was a lesson in how much pain I can get through. Facing a 115k stage into a rather stiff head/cross wind, the goal was to hide, but that was shattered at the 15k mark on the 4k climb when attack after attack had the bunch strung out and me losing contact. After the descent the Prime Estate Train came by and we tried to get back, but it wasn't to be and as we gathered more girls a bunch of 20 of us worked at getting to the end. Everyone worked well together when they could, there were some - myself included - that had bad patches and couldn't work, but we all put in what we could and rolled in well within time cut at 10mins down. An epic day in the saddle, but it meant that we'd finished the Tour.

The Crit in Downtown Wellington - Well, 5 girls finished. 2 of them HTC. A hotdog corner made for a strung out peloton, an early crash meant things got split a bit, and the race was pretty much over for 80% of the field within the first 2 laps. Some valiant efforts were made by all, I tried to hang in there for as long as possible too, but when the lead car toots its horn behind your group, it's time to vacate the course. Watching the Team Tactics in play over the final half of the race though was great! A well deserved win to HTC.. And time to celebrate!

                         My new favourite chocolate!

That night there were many 2nd helpings witnessed from the Dessert Buffet, and through the help of Bob the VIS Mechanic and all who challenged him to a Pav eating contest, we managed to clear out the kitchen of Pavlova. The poor 5year old son of one of the officials wanted to race Bob too, but there was none left.. I estimate Bob had to have consumed roughly 3kgs of Sugar by the end of the night.. The Kiwi's thought we were insane, the Italians didn't know what to think, and the Japanese loved it so much they later got some more Pav from the supermarket so they could try beating him!

Neutral Lap of the Wellington Crit - Position Position Position!

A couple of Ciders & many laughs before hitting the hay before an 0330 wake up to get to our flight on time. Monday was a looooooong day!

This week was made so much easier by getting to race with some Awesome awesome chicks. Chloe, Clare, Sarah, Delphine - All did amazingly, it was the first UCI Tour for all and barring Sarah's throat infection stopping her from starting day 4, all finished rather respectably! Miffy unfortunatly was injured and couldn't start, but having her there helping out and doing the little things that if we had to do them might freak us out (like getting me a new battery for my powermeter after mine died in stage 2!) Her experience from a few Euro seasons of racing helped too.

Kim was amazing as Team Manager/Mum/Washer/Massage Therapist. Many late nights and early mornings and sorting everything for us so we knew where to be and when. Kim runs the TDT Race Team like clockwork.

Check out their latest exploits at The TDT RACE Blog. I'm sure the NZ report will be up soon!

And to Shaggy the Team Mechanic.. Even though he refused to waste time and water to do a full wash of our bikes after every stage, our machines were running smoothly and we never had any issues other than a couple of unavoidable punctures! Thanks Muzza!

Next stop - Oceania's in 2 weeks! The party never stops  :-)

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 -



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..

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!

Jayco Bay Classic

There’s so many race reports flying around on cyclingnews.com, cyclingtribe.com, cyclingtipsblog.com etc dealing with the specifics of each race, so just a quick report and thank you from me..


First of all, a Massive Thank You to Nigel, Nadine and Brett from Bicycle Superstore for all their help this past 4 days of racing. Having been involved with the Bay Crits many times over the years, they decided to be a part of the race again, this time with a Womens team only. Nat, Nikki, Liz, Sophie & I all appreciated the help you guys provided and we had such a fun weekend! Speaking of the girls, thanks to you guys for such a fun weekend! It was great meeting you all and can't wait to catch up with you at all of the races over the coming months!

Thanks to Dean and Jen for letting me stay at their place for the weekend! And a huge Congratulations to the both of them for getting engaged in front of the huge audience at the Ritchie Blvd Hot Dog crit on the 3rd night!! Big hugs to you both :)
I had a bit of an up and down 4 days.. The first 3 races I was reasonably happy with, but the 4th race was really tough on me mentally. I had a shocker and I’ve spent the majority of today trying to talk myself out of the slump I’m in. It’s hard when you need a pep talk when you’re the person who normally does the pep talking..

But I’ve remembered that’s one of the great things about bike racing. Whilst you might only be as good as your last race.. The next race is usually only a few days away where you can redeem yourself!

So that’s where it’s at. The Australian Nationals start tonight with a Crit in Ballarat. Good luck to everyone who’s racing, I’ll be thinking of you all.. Then it’s off to Ballarat tomorrow afternoon for us to get ready to race on Saturday!

If you’re coming up to watch, the women’s race starts at 1:30pm.. For something different I’ll be out of Black and White and will be rocking the Bicycle Superstore kit, so keep an eye out for me and be sure to give me a push up the hill!

Is this finally summer?

Today's ride was amazing. It was sunny, the sky was blue, the wind was not too bad and I had some great wheels to follow..

Afterwards I even took a book out to the backyard and got my tan on!

The forecast for the whole next week is much of the same too! Happy Dayz!

It may be 4 weeks late, but maybe this is finally the start of Summer?

Tour of Bright - Groupetto is fun!

So, some say I was overly ambitious entering A grade at the Tour of Bright knowing I would have only been back training for 6 weeks post Collarbone, but hey.. I've always been one to just throw myself in the deep end and it usually end in my learning how to swim pretty darn quick!

The week leading up to the race was pretty cruisy, but still a few nerves.. I'd only done 1 race since being back on the bike, and that was a short 45min Crit at St Kilda.. A far cry from almost 100k, backed up with a TT in the afternoon, followed by THAT climb the next day.. So the goal was to get to the end of the weekend, not in a blubbering mess.

It was a restless night for many on the Friday with Downpours like we'd never heard before battering the roof and making us realise we were in for a wet weekend.. Waking up to the Alarm Saturday morning with the sound still going, I reminded myself that probably my favourite race in Europe was wet and windy, so this was going to be fun!

Long story short, the rain stopped about 2 minutes before we rolled out, and the whole weekend ended up being the most fantastic weather you could possibly imagine!

Stage 1 was the Happy Valley loop, and for the first time the girls were starting in Bright. I rolled out with a few nerves realising that it was 3 months to the day (give or take timezones..) that I'd had the accident.. It was a fairly leasuirly stroll towards Ovens, with everyone finding their legs and no one really willing to do too much work knowing what was ahead.. Things soon changed with the first sprint being less than 15k in, and Prime Estate took charge showing that they wanted the Sprint Jersey, which they took fairly easily over the course of the weekend with Nicole Whitburn coming away with the prize. After that there were several attacks with Mary Rogers getting quite the gap on the bunch, however she was caught by the top of Rosewhite Gap.. Unfortuntely for me, no amount of telling my legs to shut up would help and I would slowly drop of the back of the bunch just over half way up the climb. Thankfully I wasn't the only one and a small group formed and we worked well over the dead and windy back roads to Mount Beauty to make it to the final climb.. By now the heat was bearing down and the very sheltered Tawonga climb got quite hot, but it was over with reasonably quickly and there was the finish line! I muttered to myself the same thing I say every time I reach the top of that climb... 'Thank F(&^ for that...'

The goal was to not come last - Mission Accomplished!

Time to roll back to Bright, set up the TT bike and put the feet up, eat, eat some more, and then get kitted up again for 15.5k of Pain!

Stage 2 - Time Trial..

So being the ex Triathlete that I am (shhhh, don't tell anyone), I still own a TT bike (not a triathlon bike, now I'm a cyclist it's a TT bike..) And damn it, if i'm going to own one, I'm going to use it! Even if it was likely I would come last.. As a great prep for the TT, for the first time in 12 months I'd dragged the bike out 2 days before and gone for an hours spin, so of course I'd be ready for this!

Everyone knows that in cycling it's not about how fast you go, it's about how fast you look.. And I'm pretty sure I looked fast! I even borrowed Melina's Aero Helmet to give me the full look.

Basically the TT went like this - OMG this hurts - Shut up Legs.. How slow am I going??? SHUT UP LEGS! The End. I'm sure they were all repeated over and over in my head, and it seemed to take a lot longer than the reported 27 minutes, but I'll take it.. And again, Didn't come last!

A much needed Gelati post race, and then it was time for a swim in the beautiful Ovens river to cool off and help the legs. It was a perfect afternoon and I could have sat there for hours, but it was time to go and eat again, and put the legs up again, and get the bike ready again.. Gee I'd forgotten how much was involved in this stage racing business!

After a dodgy nights sleep due to too much caffeine the previous day, we woke to another beautiful morning for racing. Surprisingly the legs felt pretty good, so more food, a bit of a stretch, and off to catch the start of the boys race before a bit of a spin to get the legs going. Then it was time to race again!

Things got off to a VERY slow start.. At first I thought I'd just sit in, save the legs, and give myself a fighting chance of at least making it 1k into the climb with the bunch, but that was boring, so I moved up to the front to help out with a bit of the work..

Things got a little messy when Masters Men passed our bunch, as after they'd got a bit of space, I managed to get a gap on the bunch a few k out from the first sprint of the day, so went for it and ended up reovertaking them.. After I'd been chased down by Mary from XOSIZE who was in need of the sprint points, the Men passed us again and the Cheif Comm stopped our bunch for 3 mins to let them get a gap. Great timing because after that effort I was stuffed! Definitely lacking in race k's in the legs! Never mind, I'd had some fun, got things going a bit, and now it was time to recover and look at the 30k climb up ahead.. Reaching the base of the climb, Vic Luxton (RACE) and I quickly dropped off the back, then rejoined, and then dropped off again, and set about a steady tempo to get in a nice training ride on a lovely sunny day. We came across Nic Whitburn who'd taken out the final sprints and been caught and spat by the bunch, and the 3 of us rolled up the hill as groupetto and finished together. Thank you to those girls, I've never enjoyed climbing Hotham more than I have on that day!

Vicki Whitlaw dominated the race yet again, winning all 3 stages. Everyone did an amazing job, and well done to all the SKCC girls who raced and placed above their expectations! A massive acheivement and I'm proud of you, especially those of you who were hesitant over racing A grade!

Whilst being competitve in the race would have been my ultimate goal, knowing where I'm at and where I've been, I walked away from the weekend with a massive smile on my face. One noteable member of my club felt that my 23rd place on GC was only 'Creditable', howver it's easy to judge when you don't know the story behind the results..

Now it's onwards and upwards. I've had a couple of solid weeks post Bright, and am looking forward to the next 3 weeks with Christmas, Bay Crits, and then my first attempt at racing the Nationals on the 8th of Jan.. Only 3 short weeks away..

Thanks to Jarrod Partridge (http://www.jxpphotography.com.au/) for the amazing photo's!