CT Blog By Trent Carman: 2011 Officially Kicks Off

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Well 2011 has officially kicked of with the start of the 1st major race of 2011 held just two Saturdays ago. I will have to admit it does fell a little bit weird saying that with April just on the horizon. Over the past few years my race calendar has been a slow build up through December and picking it up in January, starting to hit the training hard in February and March using the races like Sizzling Summer Series as a testing ground on were I’m at and then bring it home in April for the State titles and the nationals. However this year has been different as it is my 1st year in the under 23 division I had my National championships in January so the run in to the start of the year has been a bit different to what I am use to. With the National Champs being so early in they year (8^rh of Jan) they felt a lot more like the end of 2010 rather than the start of 2011 and having a rest form the 9^th Jan to the 14th of February my racing year didn’t really start to March the 27^th. This meant that the run into the new racing year was going to be a lot different to what I am use to. So instead of using the pre session crits as a first serious hit out I had to hold of to the FoodWorks Queensland Teams Series before I started to find some "racing legs". 

So the 27th of March had finally come around and it was round 1 of the FoodWorks Queensland Teams Series, this was the first time this year I could have a real good idea on how my training was coming along. The racing kicked of with a 28km individual time trial (2 laps of a 14km course) in the morning and followed by a 56km team time trial (4 laps) just a few hours later. Because the same riders had to do both of the races the team decided that 3 riders (Dave Edwards, Ben Catajar and Alex Wohler) will ride for GC in the ITT and the rest of the team will just use it as a training ride and save there legs for the TTT.



The Team had a good start to the day with Dave Edwards finishing 5th on GC and 1st in the white jersey competition and Alex Wohler just missed out on the top 10 coming in in 15th place. Next was the teams TTT, the 6 of us set out at a very hot pace and we were on track to do a good time, but then all of a sudden we had lost 2 riders just after the 1st lap and Alex was suffering from back problems so he had to pull the pin at the end of the 2nd lap. Now we were half way with half my team gone and with Ben finding the pace a bit hot it was up to Dave and myself to try and make the best of a bad situation. In the end the team finished in 11th place so it was not a good result for the team and but we did get the white jersey so that will be the teams objective for the next race. Even though it was not the best result the team has had I was more that pleased what I had in the legs at this stage of the year and I will be looking forward to defending Dave’s white jersey with the Erdinger boys in round two of the FoodWorks Queensland Teams Series.

Trent