Getting dizzy...

So my season has started. The Bay Criterium Series and National Championships are done for another year and I can now focus on my European season. But before I head off to sunny (or so I hope) Mallorca, Spain for my first professional training camp I thought I should give you the run down on my last week and a bit of racing.

The Bay Crit Series, as I mentioned in my last blog, is a series of 4 (or usually 5) closed circuit races held in and around Geelong every January. While some serious racing goes on the series has a fantastic atmosphere to it that is the closest Australia gets to the huge criteriums that come in the weeks after the TdF.

I was fortunate to be asked by the MB cycles team, or the team I raced for in China early last year, to join the team as their sprinter for the series. I joined fellow Canberra rider, Jess MacLean, my roomie from the New Zeeland tour, Davina Summers and two strong club riders, Liz Young and Kate Finnegan on the MB team.

Marcel Benson- the team manager- is a huge supporter of female cycling and does an enormous amount for the sport so it was great to throw on the pink and white colours once more and try and have a crack at the overall title, something I narrowly missed out on in 2009 when I finished 3rd overall to Kirsty Broun and Josie Tomic.

In the four days of racing I finished consistently taking two seconds and a third which gave me second overall. It was a little disappointing not to claim a stage win but definitely gives me something to aim for in 2011.

Rochelle Gilmore and her Honda dream team were incredibly dominant throughout the series with Rochelle claiming an impressive three wins.

Only a few days later I was taking the start line of the National Criterium Championships in Ballarat, kitted out for the first time in my very own hTC-Columbia kit, (well pretty much, my jerseys got lost on the way from Europe to Australia so I was borrowing Judith Arndts, a former world champion, so it wasn’t a bad jersey to borrow!)

Eagar to redeem myself from the week before, I went into the race wanting to win. After having replied to a question posed to me at dinner the night before by some of my hTC team mates who were in Australia early to pre-pare for the Tour Down Under (TDU) and do reconnaissance of this year’ s world course that ‘I could win’ I had really put the pressure on.

Rocking up to the start line with the two mechanics and masseurs that the team had brought over for the Tour Down Under was a pretty surreal experience, as was the pre race conversation I had with André Greipel, the current leader of the TDU, about tactics for the sprint finish.

Unfortunately, the aggression of the AIS team throughout the race paid off and an early attack by Carly Light, a relative newcomer of the sport proved to be the winning move leaving myself and the rest of the bunch to fight it out for the minor places, and the U23 National Championship Title as Carly was a senior rider.

I was able to take out the bunch kick ahead of Megan Dunn and Rochelle Gilmore which meant I claimed second overall and the U23 category win-two medals in one race...greedy I know.
While it was disappointing not to claim the elite women’s National Champion title and the green and gold stripes, the U23 National Champion title was a sufficient consolation prize.

Making Resolutions.

As my preparation for the 2010 season rapidly heads into overdrive I thought it was about time I dusted the cobwebs off my laptop and got back into the swing of things-that is, keeping you updated about my cycling adventures and giving you a glimpse of what it’s like to travel the world as a professional cyclist.

So what have I been doing with myself since August I hear you ask? After a three week hiatus from bike racing in late September that saw me bar-hopping around Europe with my best friend I returned to Australia eager to get back into all things bike racing.

Having signed a professional contract to race with Team Columbia-HTC in 2010 (check out their website here: http://www.highroadsports.com/) I was faced with the prospect of returning to Europe in a little under three months to kick off my second European road cycling season and my first as a professional cyclist.

As it turned out, my plan to defer university for a year while I travelled Europe and attempted to fit in a bit of bike riding here and there wasn’t turning out exactly as I thought it would. While UNI is still happening, it will just take a little longer to get through. University, for me, will be done while tripping around the world chasing my dream and from the comfort of my European base in Girona, Spain- I have enrolled in a Bachelor of Communications which I will do completely by correspondence through Griffith University.

The idea of racing with, rather than against, one of the biggest teams in the world was incredibly motivating and I jumped straight into my training and preparation for the coming season.

This motivation was quickly dispelled when I came to the realisation that three weeks of no exercise, late nights, copious amounts of French pastries and Belgium beer doesn’t exactly leave you fit to climb Everest, let alone the small hills on Canberra’s bike paths (they’re tough!).

Needless to say, the first few weeks of my training program saw me dragging myself across Canberra on my push bike at a little faster than snail’s pace.

Now-two months on- I am a week out from my first race of the 2010 season, The Bay Criterium Series, and can only hope that the hard work I have put in will pay dividends. A series of four closed circuit races held every year around Geelong, the Bay Criteirum Series regularly draws some of the best fields for female cycling in Australia. After finishing third overall in this event in 2009 I am hoping I will be able to go one or maybe even two better.

Only a few days after this series is the Nationals Championships which will be held in Ballarat, as they are every year, and will be for the next six years...but lets not get into that. The recent announcement by Cycling Australia that the National Championships will be held on the same, arduous course for the next six years is a sore point for most road sprinters in Australia.

The Championships consist of three individual events: a Time Trial, a Road Race, and a Criterium. Having never won a national medal in any discipline on the Road, here’s hoping that I can finally start my collection.

So with the 2010 season moments away, what is my New Year’s resolution? While learning as much as I can from the best team in world features pretty prominently on my list of resolutions, keeping my blog regularly updated definitely takes the top spot.

But really, with a new team, a bigger race program and plenty of things to be learnt there will be no shortage of things to write about.

So I appeal to you to forgive my failures of the past and re-add me to your favourites. Watch this space, I promise it will be worth it.