This year the Phillip Island Spectacular
was focused solely on teams racing, the format consisted of a team time trial
followed by a 15 lap race around the grand prix circuit. On the Friday night
before the race, as tactics were discussed, I jokingly suggested it would be a
more exciting race if it poured rain. Needless to say on the Saturday morning,
when it was pouring rain, the girls were not impressed, and told me to eat
breakfast outside.
I was both nervous and excited for my first
team time trial with BCS, we had worked out a plan and I felt that we actually
managed quite well considering we had not ridden together before. I was stoked
when we came in with the third fastest time, a big improvement from my last tt,
where I finished second last!
All of a sudden we had 30 minutes to get organized
for the road race. Everyone was running around frantically and becoming
stressed as we did not expect to have such little time between the tt and the
road race. The plan was simple, we needed as many QOM and sprint points as we
could get. Unfortunately Nic was out with a sinus infection, but the other
girls certainly made up for her not being there! Lauretta and Tayla stayed
right up the front, taking the majority of the sprint points and the KOM
bonuses. Minda was continually attempting breakaways and chasing down anything
that went off the front. For entire race the weather was fairly pour, it
rained, whether you had your glasses on or off you still couldn’t see, and
everyone did there best not to slide around the corners. The race came down to a
bunch sprint, we has three girls in the top 10, with Tayla 4th,
Lauretta 5th and myself 7th. Nic came running over
wrapped in a blanket, yelling that we had taken the overall win for the teams
classification.
We were happy, excited, relieved and very
glad to have finished the race upright. Despite the fact the we had some
amazing ‘dirt tans’ and were sopping wet and freezing cold, we were running
around taking photos and having a great time with some of our other
competitors.
I could not be happier to be part of this
amazing team of girls, and absolutely stoked to come away with a win for the
team in a VRS race. Overall the day was definitely a highlight for me and I’m
looking forward to our next race as a team!
