Where to begin with this tour as it turned out to be a bad tour for the team. This may be a understatement as things went from bad to worse for all the girls ....hope you enjoy the read ..
So Kate, Nik and guest rider Lauretta Hanson began the long drive to Coonabaran at 4am on Wednesday morning full of excitment for the long tour ahead the first 2 stages were in Narrabri a 3.6km prologue followed by a 30min criterium.
Nik and Lauretta were off in the first few riders this how ever resulted in problems arising straight away as the course was not fully cleared from cars yet ...
Lauretta having to go round cars and Nik having to wait for 3 cars in her prologue.
Nik received some bad news of the passing of her nana decide to call it a day and head home to be with family ..special mention must go out to super husband Greg for driving 11hr up to pick nik up then driving the 11 hr back home with only a dinner break..(what a man )
Kate and Lauretta race the crit in the afternoon, which was a bit of a non event as a crash caused the race to be nuetralised for 20min of the 30min crit, giving noone the chance to really get into the race when the bell was rung, Kate came home in 7th place.
We drove back to Coonabarabran via looking at the next days decents at Lauretta's request however it made the girls more nervous and Nik even more confident she had made the correct decission to go home.
Fridays stage was a hilly 80km with 1100m of climbing, the last 15km a long climb with some steep pinches, and without a hill climber on our team both Lauretta and Kate were nervous.
The first climb came around 10km and really kicked up at 20% at its peak at 17km. Kate got over in the second bunch, Lauretta in the 4th. Then the decent which Kate enjoyed and worked with the second bunch to rejoin the first, making it a peleton of about 30 riders. When the final climb started Kate tried to stay with the front girls as long as possible and then road at her own tempo up the climb, fininshing in a credible 21st position, and Lauretta finishing no too far behind.
The day was raining, cold and windy, and then this was made worse by the fact that once we had finished our race up the top of the climb, exhausted and cold, we had to wait over an hour for the men to finish before we were allowed to head down the mountain. And the weather was that bad it was not going to be safe for us to ride down, luckily Liz, from Specialised womens team helped everyone out to ensure they had a warm dry safe lift down the mountain. Disaster strikes again, it was at this stage the exhaustion for Lauretta started kicking in, she had not been feeling well all week and just wanted to sleep.
Lauretta woke Saturday still tired and feeling not well so decided to pull the pin, so Kate started Saturday on her own, with Lauretta in the car with s helpful woman from Coonababran driving our car. The race started fine, Kate was confident and excited finally a day to shine, first break of the day, Kate goes in it to test the legs up the first feww climbs and feeling good, drop back in the peleton, 15km later a few girls start moving off the front nearly someone from every team, Kate goes around the left of someone andsuddenly her rear wheel gets taken out, shes in the gutter in a bit of pain, bike broken, pedal broken and shifter broken. End of tour, time to spend the next 2 hours driving behind the womens road race, and watch the girls race very negatively.
So we drove home Saturday afternoon/Sunday mornind feeling sad and sorry for ourselves and Kate trying to work out how she was going to get a bike before flying to the USA on Tuesday.... Special thanks to Total Rush Bendigo Cycles and faithful mechanic and team mate Roz and Brett Bradley for all ensuring Kate had a bike ready to go Tuesday morning, even if it meant little sleep and very rushed packing a new Specialized Venge frame was rebuilt and rearing to go.
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