National Road Race Championships – 75km – 22 September 2001

Conditions: moderate winds, 28°C, 12 noon

I woke up feeling lethargic.  My right leg was still sore and I had to lift my leg onto the pedal to clip in.  This race was important to me so I put my leg and feelings to the back of my mind and focussed on warming up.  I did 15min on the rollers, had breakfast and stretched well.  Then I finished my warmup on the road and headed down to the esplanade in Mooloolaba.  We were introduced at 11am and had a neutral rollout to the start, situated 15km out of Mooloolaba.  I had nothing in the legs so decided to sit on the front and spin the legs over all the way out.

The course consisted of 3 laps of a hilly 25km circuit.  There were several short power climbs and one main 3km climb that kicked sharply for 1km, flattened out for 500m then rose steadily for another 1.5km.  The peloton stayed together and road sedately for the first lap.  Although I felt really ordinary I thought I would try an attack and see what would happen.  I gained 20sec on the peloton but the NSW girls gave chase and I only stayed away for 3km.  I fell back into the peloton and tried to recover.  We hit the main climb and Bates attacked.  I tried to respond but had nothing in the legs.  I hovered off the back by 50m and couldn’t bridge the gap.

With only one lap to go, 11 riders were up the road and I was chasing hard with 2 other riders.  One rider dropped off, leaving two of us who continued to work well, but the break had 1.30min on us and I knew we couldn’t close the gap on 11 riders.  We ascended the main climb at a steady pace and I finished 12^th about 2min down.

Not an ideal result but I had a few things working against me today.  Anyway, I have Warrnambool to train for so, there is no point dwelling on a bad day.