Aust Road Champs - Part One

Well I survived a tough week at uni - chem pracs and just busy we had a lot of pracs and some of them took a few hours with all of the processes we had to go through but it was interesting......but to the cycling

Shane and I got to Canberra on Tues night and rode the TT circuit on the Wed, the course was very undulating starting with a nasty climb from the starting line. So we knew we were in for a tough day on the bike.

On Thursday it was ITT day and I was off at 9:48am. The interesting part was the bike check, my bike only just made it as the front of the seat has to be 5cm behind the crank/bottom bracket and I only just got in. The end of the ITT bars must be no further than 75cm from the end of the seat too. Next year is going to be worse as there is a 3 to 1 rule which will make some bikes illegal, it has to do with the width of the tubes in the frame, and some handlebars that are too flat will be illegal too, the word is that some of the Cervelo P3's may not pass. Then there are wheels - next year any wheel that has not been signed off the UCI list will not be allowed. End of story. So already nervous and relieved that my bike was ok...and my helmet - as the helmet has to have the Australian standards sticker so it can be used (That means don't buy helmets from overseas as they wont have the sticker...even if they are the same helmet...Go Figure?)

Warmed up on the windtrainer and my legs just didn't feel peak, but they felt ok, I got to the start and was in big chain ring (my first mistake for the day)....Disc wheel in, fast helmet, new skinsuit on and set. My first two kms was terrible, my HR was too high, my legs were screaming and I took too long to get into my small chain ring (will I, wont I etc etc.....) anyway it was a headwind and I changed to small chain ring and stayed there for most of the ride. My minute rider was getting closer, but the hills were hurting and HR still too high (settle settle)...at the turnaround, suddenly slight tailwind, I caught my minute girl and kept motoring, I stopped pedalling a couple of times at the top of hills as I was stuffed....crossed the line feeling like I could not have gone any quicker but thinking I might have stuffed up.

Then Shane rode his at 12:15....My presentation still hadn't happened as they said they had trouble with the timing equipment. Shane wasn't happy with his either, the hills were worse than on our little test of the course the previous day, but that is expected. Then they called the medallists for my ride and I had won silver - woo hoo....14 seconds behind the gold medallist. When we collected our medals the gold medallist had gone, so only had silver and bronze on the podium.

Happy with winning the silver medal as these events can go either way and with a course like that I was not convinced I was going to win anything.....

I found out later that the gold medallist was a world champion from the para world championships, she has a leg injury in her lower leg and only just three weeks ago won a world championship so hats off to her she was awesome.

Full results here

Part two will be the road race and then there is the crit to come but overall I was happy with a medal