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With the Australian Open Road Championships in my own backyard of Ballarat, it was an opportunity to test myself against some of Australia's, and indeed the World's best cyclists. Being a local, there is a fair bit of pressure to perform as for many of my friends and workmates this is the only race they see me compete in all year. Its great that our sport has become familiar on the back pages of the paper, even my hairdresser was coming out for a look!

 

The day before the race was pretty low key: a quick spin in the morning with my girlfriend, a casual meeting with my search2retain teammates and coach (former World Jnr TT Champ and adopted Ballarat local) Josh Collingwood at a local cafe, before a relaxing dinner ("pasta again!" complains Jane my girlfriend) and a movie. Pretty boring really. It can be difficult sometimes to restrain yourself from wasting energy by mowing that lawn, cleaning that mess in the garage, but hopefully a day on the couch will reap benefits come race day.

 

After a quick blast on the ergo to open the pipes in preparation of a quick start to the race, and some breakfast (more pasta!), it was out to the course to meet my teammates at our feed station halfway up the climb. Search2retain had Neil Van der Ploeg and Cal Britten to support myself, with Paul Van der Ploeg representing Felt to also offer support on the road. These guys are all experienced international mountain bikers and so we were quietly confident that we could be part of this race. While stuffing my pockets with Balance Nutrition gels and my secret power foods (a couple of jelly beans and Mars Bars!!) before the race start, friends and family began to arrive. All hands were on deck: some were tuning into race radio, while others filled bidons with Coke and worked out where to stand, spread out along the road so none of us riders missed a bottle on what was brewing to be a hot and gusty day.

 

With a tailwind up the 4km climb, it was always going to be a fast first lap, but a record lap of 14mins was 1min faster than the previous best set last year. Anyone keen should trek out to Buningyong and attempt just 1 lap at this pace, just to get an impression for themselves, then contemplate doing another 15laps! It was no wonder I later heard reports that riders were shelled out the back on that 1st lap, with numbers in the vicinity of 450-500w being murmured in hushed tones. With the 16 strong Green Edge team driving the tempo, signs were ominous that today would be hard and fast. "At least we would be home for dinner at a reasonable hour," I thought. Early on I tried to sneak into a move off the front so as to give myself a buffer on the pro guys before they chose to turn on the gas and I succeeded in sneaking away with 2 motorbikes in the form of O'Grady and Bobridge. Knowing that the remaining Green Edge riders would be protecting our lead I was positive about this move, however it lasted less than a lap before the next attack countered.

 

With the exception of Cam Meyer flying away off the front solo for an extended period, the race behind him was typified by riders in turn surging up the climb with the wind at their backs, before regrouping in the crosswinds across the top of the course to assess the damage. It was relentless with no exaggeration. Matt Lloyd was certainly the main protagonist, with Richie Porte also inflicting much pain. Green Edge had so many cards to play that they just put a different rider up the road at every opportunity forcing the rest of us to chase. It was very much a battle of Green Edge Vs everyone else! Mark O'Brien had the strength to attack and get a gap late in the race and I also played my hand with 3-4 laps to go in the hope that the pro's might let a 'nobody' a bit of breathing space. Every lap this went on, but as the bell chimed for the final ascent it was gruppo compacto with some 20 riders from an original 165 left to battle it out.

 

Before the road even tilted upwards I noticed Richie Porte shifting down a few gears so I readied myself to react to his every twitch. He launched along with Matt Lloyd at the very base of the climb. I went with this move with what little I had left but those guys are just at another level and I blew to pieces after holding their wheel for only 500m. With that some riders bridged and went past me in a blur, while others suffered a similar fate, as I tried to compose myself to limit my loses in the vain hope that those in front would slow in a tactically game of cat and mouse. It was not to be however as the power of Simon Gerrans took the race up the road and I was left to ride the final half a lap with likes of Mick Rogers and Luke Roberts - not bad company, but I was already counting the little amateur errors I had made earlier in the day.... 2013 preparations had quietly begun :)

 

 

Stats:

 

distance: 161km

time: 4hrs 9mins

avg speed: 39kmh

max speed: 78kmh

avg hr: 154bpm

max hr: 187bpm

avg power: 338w

max power: 1224w

number of Mars Bars: 2

 

 

Jay

 

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Green girls have the Edge

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Google tells me there are 49 ways to dot your I’s and cross your T’s. I’m pretty sure it’s lying, but for the sake of this argument – I’ll let it slide. For those who are unaware of this saying, ‘to dot your I’s and cross your T’s’ means to take care of every detail, even minor ones or to be meticulous and thorough in your actions. So why the English lesson? Well the difference between being a good athlete and champion athlete often lays in one’s dedication to dotting your I’s and crossing your T’s in all aspects of training, recovery and nutrition. To reach the top level in any sport, it is not sufficient to simply undertake the prescribed training; equal emphasis needs to be placed on those extra ‘1%ers’, because at the top level in sport 1% can make all the difference.



I have just gotten back from the biggest 2 weeks on my Australian cycling calendar, competing in the Jayco Bay Cycling Classic and the Australian National Championships with theBikeExchange.com.au Dream Team. I feel as though I have been hit by a truck, reversed over several times and am now parked on by said truck and I’m 99% sure it’s just my bodies way of paying me back for not addressing the 1%ers as meticulously as I should’ve.

THE STORY:

Thoughts gathered and brain refreshed after a week hiding away in Ballarat, I met up with the BikeExchange.com.au Dream Team girls on New Year’s Eve in Geelong and welcomed the New Year with the first round of the Jayco Bay Cycling Classic. Despite not being a renowned criterium rider, I had come off a big block of training, was feeling strong and confident that I could help my team achieve a result in the series. 

Day 1 at Ritchie Boulevard went better than I could’ve imagined – I was up the front for the first half of the race trying to do my bit for the team before retreating to the tail end of the bunch but still managing to finish with teammate Rochelle Gilmore rounding out the podium in 3rd place! I have only ever finished 1 round of the Bay Crits in the past 4 years I have done them, and the longest I had ever lasted on this course was 10min/45min – so on Day 1 I was already ahead.


It hurt, but I did it.
Day 2 in the Eastern Gardens was held in what could only be described as inhumain conditions, 42 degrees before you even got on the road. Unfortunately for us, the team didn’t have a great race but considering the conditions we were happy with our performance – we finished and still had all our skin. Day 3 in Portarlington I woke up with a queezy stomach (I’m blaming funsized chocolates which I shouldn’t have been eating in the first place, there’s nothing fun about them.) and so after ending up in the red zone by going with an early attack on lap 1, on lap 2 I went straight to the bathroom. 4th and final day in Williamstown our team was hoping for a bunch sprint and Rochelle finished it off with 3rd in the bunch kick for 4th overall. As for me? I had nothing. Riding my bike I was the equivalent of a dead horse, being beaten aimlessly to run.

After the final race, needless to say I wasn’t feeling confident leading into the National Criterium Championships in Ballarat the day after but fronted the start line with fingers crossed that the rest of the girls coming off Bay Crits would be feeling equally as fantastic as I was – they weren’t and mid-way through the race I called it quits. That left less than 48hrs to somehow master reset my body in some vague attempt to recapture what was my form leading into Bay Crits 1 week ago.
Last ditched effort to find my legs before the road race
D Day and I thought I was feeling good but turns my body was lying to me – how rude. The thing about that Nationals course is that you find out pretty quickly if you’ve got the legs or not…. And yeah, I didn’t. Lap 1 and I was blown out the back. Luckily there were a few other girls in the same boat and we lapped around drifting little by little from the back of the peloton before being pulled from the course at 3 laps to go. That was it, as quickly as it came around, Nationals was over. So here’s my question – WTF HAPPENED?!?!



It is so easy to get caught up in the atmosphere on tour that it is easy to get distracted and forget about the little things, especially for someone like me who has the attention span of a goldfish…what was I talking about again? Over the past 2 weeks I was going to bed at close to 11:00pm most nights, walking around when I should’ve had my feet up, not paying particular attention to my diet – and ultimately, I paid my price. Sure, these things may work for some people but not me. I was on a steep downward slope and as each day went by, I was feeling worse and worse on the bike. I was strong and knew I was good enough to be able to help out the team but when it came down to the pointy end of the race, when the best get sorted from the rest, I just didn’t have it. That’s the only explanation I have for my embarrassingly poor performances of the past 2 weeks.

It was evident who had put in the hard yards leading into the past events and they were ultimately rewarded for their sacrifices. In the end, it was those 1%ers that made all the difference. Back home now I have resorted back to my strict ways, I have my routines and sure they are time consuming and painstaking at times but they are all necessary for me to become the best I can be at my job. There are many different tips and tricks athletes use to gain that extra 1% advantage over their competition, as there are ways to dot I’s and cross T’s, and it doesn’t matter how you do it – you just have to make sure you do it. 

I’m confident that it won’t take too long to unlock the form that showed its head a fortnight ago and now have only a few more weeks left working at my part time jobs and enough time to fit in a solid training block before hopefully competing in the NZCT Women’s Tour of New Zealand on the 22nd Feb. In the meantime I will have my glasses on, pen in hand and making sure every I and T is left dotted and crossed.

Until then stay safe and happy pedalling

M xx


P.S - OK, so the helicopter ride with the girls WAS pretty cool

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Sir Chris Hoy won his second medal of the track cycling World Cup in Kazakhstan today with gold in the sprint.

The four-times Olympic champion added victory in the sprint to the silver he won in the keirin. And there was another medal for the British team as Dani King claimed silver in the women's omnium.

It meant a total of three medals in a relatively low-key weekend for the British teams at the first of the four-event series.

Hoy, who pulled out of last month's European Championships with a chest infection, appears to have recovered well.

He recorded a sub-10 seconds ride in qualifying for the sprint and was only really troubled in his semi-final against Germany's Robert Forstemann when he needed to come from behind in a best-of-three series to secure a place in the final.

Russia's Denis Dmitriev was beaten in straight races in the gold-medal race.

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So the road season for 2011 is coming to a close and as a positive season wraps up for another year I am left to ponder all the final few months of training and racing.

The week consisted of a 90km road race, a pairs time trial and a 1hour criterion. The road race shaped up to be a hard day in the wind and rain. Early on the brake went and due to the wind the field on 60 split early. After battling away I managed to get 15th with Blair battling for fourth.

In the pair time trial Blair and I struggled out of bed for a 6am start on the main streets of the Gold Coast. The length was 30km and we missed a medal by 40seconds. We got 4th on the morning however with the form and late night we were pretty happy to just wake up.

The crit saw a very quick pace early on and many in the field dropped out before the first half. My legs were going along OK however I managed to miss the brake again, however Blair Windsor was in the top three. After an hour Blair sprinted and grabbed a silver medal.

Considering the lack of representatives for our university we were very happy to come away with a few top ten finishes and a medal.

Over the next few months I will be getting ready for the bay crits in Geelong and the results will be posted shortly after

Zach Baker   

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So I’ve been seriously procrastinating on the blogging front.. Got a couple to do, so we’ll start with the Tour of Geelong.

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For this blog I thought it would be a good opportunity to take the time and write about my training partner, my own bicycle the Velocite Magnus. One of the most common questions I get asked when I’m out ridding on the road is what bike is that? Its understandable that most people are unfamiliar with the Velocite brand due to the fact that they are relatively new on the market, only forming in 2008. With this Velocite like to state that because they are new on the scene they have no heritage and therefore no legacy to hold them back, and no traditions to satisfy. With this in mind you can see that their 2011 range is very impressive and includes not one but 3 well designed carbon road bikes to take on any riders needs. The Geos is perfect for long and hilly days in the saddle. The Magnus is designed to be one of the stiffest bikes on the planet with only a small weight penalty on the Geos and the 3rd bike, the newest inclusion to the Velocite family, is the Helios Aero. 



With 3 awesome bikes on offer I had the hard choice to pick just one and after long discussions it was the Magnus that finally won and for the last 6months I have racked up a few k’s with the Magnus. Now when a bicycle brand clams that they are one of, if not the stiffest bikes in the world the first thought that pops into mind is in what sacrifice has been taken to achieve this goal. The general rule is, as you increase the frames stiffness you lose a lot of comfort . This is why a bicycle company does not set out to create the stiffest bike in the world but more so the complete package of how well the frame absorbs road buzz vs stiffness and to create this without adding to much weight to the frame. That was my only worry and I was hoping that Velocite had not just set out to create a bike far superior than any other company in terms of how stiff the frame is and just threw everything else out the window. But it didn’t take long for me to realise that Velocite had managed to build a bike that was really comfortable to ride and was on par with my old bike (a Trek Madone). 



Now its time to talk about the bikes main feature, how well it can accelerate. Now I am not just saying this because I am a sponsored rider of Velocite, this is a completely honest review. If I had ever felt the bike was not up to my standards I would say so, but I can’t and for one simple reason - this frame is the fastest bike I have ever owned or ridden. When you kick, it just goes, its not sluggish in the acceleration,. Some bikes I have ridden in the past felt like the rear end is moving and twisting when you jump out of the saddle but not this one. When you race up a hill its rock solid and just goes where you want it to go. With my old bikes you could always feel the rear stays flexing when doing strength endurance efforts in the 53 - 11 but not this bike, its solid. 

It’s now time to talk about the weight of the bike. This is one of the easy things to test, all you need to do is put the frame on some scales and all your questions are answered. At 1080 grams for a medium frame it is not a super light weight bike, but it all so doesn’t fall in the heavy weight category. Now days 1080 grams is average for a top end road bike but you still need to keep in mind that the Magnus is not the lightest frame in the Velocite range. Over all I think the Magnus is a great bike from how stable it is when you are flying around a corner to how well it takes off when you kick back out of the corner. Its obvious that a lot of time and effort has been put in to the design process of the frame to get an all round package and if you were after just one bike to tackle the fast crits and the hilly road races I think this is your bike. On top off all that Velocite have even managed to take a few lessons learnt from the Helios aero and if you look at the rear end of the bike you will see that aero dynamics was in the back of there mind when they took the Magnus to the drawing board. I hope this review has given you some information on a bicycle that is not so common at the local races, but I feel that this will change in the next few years.

If you wont to read an independent review bikerumor did a review on the 2010 Magnus and you can see it herehttp://www.bikerumor.com/2010/11/20/review-velocite-magnus-carbon-fiber-road-bike/ 

Trent

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Good news at first. Grega Bole won the Slovenian national championship in Nova Gorica, preceding at the end of a race of 180 km of lenght Furdi and Gazvoda. For blue-fucsia rider, this is the first national title and the first seasonal success.

"I'm very happy, this victory is a good sign for the rest of the season after that the first was was not so good for me - Bole explained - I'll be in Tour de France with the jersey of national champion: this is an honor!.

No joy for Lampre-ISD in Sicily, where the Italian title was won by Visconti.

The team directed by Maini was at the departure in Aci Catena with 10 riders and among them there were Cunego and Ulissi as possible protagonist.

Lampre-ISD led the bunch in a high pace for most part of the course but, in the penultimate lap, Cunego lost contact with the selected head group.

So, only Ulissi could try to honor blue-fucsia color and he tried an action with other 7 riders at 40 km to go, but the escape was neutralized at the beginning of the last lap by a group of 13 followers. Ulissi had no more chances to battle for the victory and he reached the arrival in 21st position.

"Very tough race, I could not be competitive when the things began to become important - Cunego explained - I suffered for the long climb and the heat so suddenly I had no more energies"


Ends

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Quick-Step Cycling Team will have 23 riders competing in their respective road national championship races next weekend.

“The national champion jersey is one of the most prestigious and sought-after in the cycling world," said Tom Steels, who won fourth national championship titles in Belgium. "Having the symbol of one's nation on the shoulders for a year is a privilege. We will get on the starting line with a strong, compact group in Belgium, ideally having Boonen as a captain," continues Sports Director Tom Steels "In the other seven nations where our riders will compete, there will be strong individuals like Chavanel and Pineau in France, or Ciolek in Germany. They will try to grab a final win if the chance arise. It wouldn't be bad to start the Tour de France with a national champion jersey belonging to one of our riders."

BELGIUM

Tom Boonen, Andy Cappelle, Kevin De Weert, Dries Devenyns, Nikolas Maes, Frederique Robert, Kevin Seeldraeyers, Gert Steegmans, Kevin Van Impe, Guillaume Van Keirsbulck, Kristof Vandewalle, Julien Vermote.

ITALY

Marco Bandiera, Davide Malacarne

FRANCE

Sylvain Chavanel, Jerome Pineau

HOLLAND

Ad Engels, Niki Terpstra

GERMANY

Gerald Ciolek, Andreas Stauff

CZECH REPUBLIC

Zdenek Stybar

CURACAO

Marc De Maar

SLOVENIA




Jan Tratn

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by Joey Esterhuyzen

If the UCI had a three strike rule, Alberto Contador would be in his final hours as a Tour de France contender…

This time, it wasn’t a positive drug test, or traces of plasticisers in his blood – he was simply riding without lights on his bike. The Spaniard was subsequently pulled over by French Police and a brief argument ensued. Alberto Contador claimed that he did not need lights, as his team car would light the way as he snaked down the Galibier Pass.

 The police officer on the scene suggested that the car would struggle to keep up with Contador as he descended at speeds exceeding 70km/h. It is part of French Traffic Law that all vehicles on the road must have working lights, both front and rear. Including cyclists training for the Tour De France.

The incident brings back memories of the flamboyant Mario Cipollini, pulled over by the same authorities for riding at 90km/h behind his team car, on a motorway. Cipollini claimed it was the only way he could go fast enough to do his sprint training. Cipollini was given 63 Euro fine, and a fantastic publicity boost.

Alberto Contador is in his final phase of training before the 2011 Tour De France, an event which is once again being shadowed by less favourable topics. But as with every other year, the sheer magnitude, and beauty of the event still shines through. It’s assumed that Contador will compete in the event, even though his title may be stripped from him in the coming months (assuming he wins the Grand Tour).

With less than three weeks until the Tour De France rolls out of Passage Du Gois, anticipation is starting to build! It is promised to be another unpredictable race route, with the race starting with a road stage, instead of the usual Prologue. The Tour will cover a distance of 3430km and span for 21 stages.