Emergency Services Games

Well today was the emergency services games at bacchus marsh (balliang to be exact) and I started with an 8.5km time trial and later a 45km road race. Mt ITT was a bit flat as I just could not get any speed up - dead roads, wind and I think I averaged about 36 which is bad considering I averaged 39.1 on a 17km course a week ago. I did get fastest woman and overall a decent time, but it was not my best performance and not for lack of trying as I had my HR right up and was working hard. Then the road race, all the men over 55 and women were in the one race. Looking at the girls, not many of them had much racing experience or no racing experience, or had raced triathlon which is completely different so I looked to the guys to give me he hard hotout I need before Sydey and I found it , a guy broke away in the first km and I chaed him and towed a third rider to him and then for the rest of the race, the three of us worked bloody harrd. it was a bit weird as technically we werent actually racing each other but it was a really hard ride, my HR was in the red zone the whole race and we all hammered each other and then made an agreement to roll across the line together which was kind of nice but a sprint would have been better training for me in hindsight. But anyway we did have fun, I had another girl in my age group who finished about 10 minutes behind me but she was not working hard with two blokes. Overall these games are good as they are about the spirit of competition and encourage all to participate and the best part is that we can still get a challenging ride at any level.

It was funny, one girl who raced said she got beaten by an old man as one of the 70+ retired firemen or police had beaten her and I said, look at his bike gear...this man has a pedigree he has raced for over 50 years and his son represented Australia at the Olympics in cycling, so dont get tooo upset about getting beaten by an "old man" it was Ron Neiwand whose son Gary was an Olympian....funny huh.....I am a bit tired now, we bought some new wheels too, second hand a back disc wheel for time trialling and a front lightweight wheel with ceramic bearings and they will be great in Sydney at the Masters Nationals in April, which will mean we willl be packing about 3 bikes (maybe four) and track wheels - 4, time trial wheels -4 and other wheels 8 so we will have about 16 wheels and the bieks and wind trainer and just a lot of gear.....might need a new car- we take Shanes car as my car has no racks and it limits the gear we can take....