Sunday 15th July 2012
Finally, a mountain biking post for the BCS girls!!
Roz took a bunch of five mountain biking ladies out through the bush around Maiden Gully, on the outskirts of Bendigo.  These ladies are definately not new to cycling, but they are quite new to the world of mountain biking. 
The idea for the ride was for Roz to guide the ladies on a loop that they can then rediscover another day and to also offer up hints and tips for bettering their technical skills and overall confidence whilst riding on the dirt.
The ride was a resounding success!

Initially, we all rode as a group along some bitumen roads to access the bush, which gave us time to warm up and enjoy some early morning banter.  Our first challenging section came at about 20minutes into the ride and to describe this, one could say the valley looks like a big dipper...........and VERY rocky!  Roz gave an example of how to descend and then came back to help and coach each of the girls to get down.......... These chicks are impressive!  So we had an 80% success, (only one lady decided it wasn't for her); at the novice stage in my mountain biking career, I doubt I would have attempted what these girls achieved.  We regrouped at the top of the big dipper after walking up the (rocky!) incline.  Then there was the lovely meandering of singletrack, a few more rocks, some quartz rocks and of course the trees........ onwards towards Stumpy Gully.  Some open fire trail arriving at the big dam which is the start and finish of the fun loop that we call the Stumpy Gully Loop! The loop is mostly single track with rocks!  And puddles.  And rocks.  Not too much climbing - a good track to cruise on and also a good track to rip it up if you want to push yourself.
Everyone was having a ripper time.  The ride ended up being a little over two hours with numerous stops to regroup and share "zen" mantras for getting through tricky sections.
Things like...........Breathe!  Let it roll.  Pedal.  Feather the brakes. Push, Push,Push, Pedal, Pedal, Pedal.

 The only way to finish up is to say that if we measured this ride by smiles it would rate 10 out of 10.......

P.S.  Stay tuned for another ride in late August or early September...........Date to be announced.

Santos North Western Tour

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.

Bendigo Club Tour

well the long weekend in June is club tour weekend ,with kate taking part in her first tour and lining up in B grade and Nik in c grade the girls were excited for a big weekend unfortunately nik came down with tonsillitis on wednesday and started the tour however pulling out after stage 1 pulling e3 hart rate to e1 watts never good so nik turned to support roll of cheering kate on.


Kate got better and better as the tour went on and a good hit out of racing and it is safe to say will be keen to race agin next year ...
thank to bendigo club for putting on a great weekend of racing and for the Melbourne girls who came up and mixed it up
our next race as a team is round 3 of NRS santos north western tour at the end of june. kate is then off to the U.S.A for some racing... fair to say she is a bit excited for her new adventure and will keep us posted on whats going on .





thank once agin to Darren Casey for the great pictures .........

Up Date

Ok so just a quick up date of what everyone is up to Nik,Cait and Shantelle have country champs coming up tomorrow at Harcourt.
The race is 2 laps of a 12k circuit followed by 1 lap of a 56k circuit...
hear a look at race profiles
12km Circuit  56km Circuit
As for Kate F as she is a non victorian.... she will be training up a storm to get her self ready for the
Fred Icke which is on the 2nd of june
so if your in or around Creswick next saturday give her a cheer as she go's past ....
hear's a look at the circuit 3lap
CSV_Creswick.htm

The next race the team will be doing is the 3ed round of the NRS which is Santos North Western Tour ,in and around Narrabri.

Tweed Heads

The good always comes with the bad, and I had been having such a good run with my health of late that I should have been a bit more cautious coming into the first NRS race of the year. The fact that I can now look back and see the tell tale signs of a virus coming on means I will take note of these signs sooner next time (hopefully) and avoid what occurred over the weekend. A big fat DNF next to my name, pretty disappointed, but you really shouldn't be racing when your morning HR is 60bpm, nearly double its normal Hr and your temperature is giving you hot and cold sweats so I only raced one miserable day of the battle of the border. On the positive side I got be be a helper for Nicole and Shantelle as they raced in B grade to gain some experience in tour racing. They both flourished and gained tremendous knowledge over the weekend, from what to do after a crash, how much time you can make up or lose on a decent and the fine art of hurting yourself till exhaustion just to stay in a criterium. I think Nicole wanted to murder me each time she came past in the criterium on the last day me yelling at her to get up the front and her legs screaming at her to stop, but she got through it nearly got dropped got back on and finished lucky 13th overall in the tour.

Full results can be found here.... http://my1.raceresult.com/details/index.php?page=4&eventid=10671&lang=en     Shantelle also discovered a lot about racing in general and it was her first ever road tour so was great for her to get through the whole 3 days...

   

Some images thanks to Gill who helped us out over the couple of days as well as Kim Howard....

Next event is country's for Nicole, Shantelle and Cait, and Fred Icke for myself

NEWCASTLE

On Friday Nik, myself, our matching bikes and the awesome Subaru wagon headed off on the road to Newcastle for a mini road trip to get some head space and have a race at my club Hunter District’s state open. I had just received my bike the day before leaving  thanks to Bendigo cycles and Specialized bikes being so quick at getting me back on the road following my recent about incident with another car we don't talk about.

 The road trip up was quite eventful ranging from a brief stop at the inland submarine, a random man at a road side rest stop with his knee totally popped out and dislocated and a gorgeous 45minute ride in Goulburn to brake the trip up (utilising my local knowledge of the bike shop/greengrocer/cafe in Goulburn to ensure we had good coffee for the final 3 hour drive).

We arrived in Newcastle Friday night to a beautifully cooked roast lamb with roast vegetables and beans and nice wine, all local produce thanks to Gill’s great preparation. As well there was of course, the great company.

Saturday we got to sleep in a little and headed off to my favourite cafe in Newcastle, 3Bean, for an amazing breakfast and coffee to start the day off in a calm manor we then went for a brief stroll along the lake and headed home to kit up, prep up and ride out to Kooragang island in the gorgeous summery 28 degree weather.

Off we headed for the 28km ride out; I’d forgotten how busy the traffic was in Newcastle. On arriving Nicole realised how much of a local celebrity I am haha…it was great to see all the riders from Newcastle, and to have such big entries in all grades was awesome indeed. We had 20 girls in the race, divided into A and B grade but all racing in the same race, for 7 laps of the infamous 7km “gang”. Nik and I had a few pre-race plans, obviously wanting at least one of us on the the podium but preferentially the 2 of us, obviously we aim high.

The race got underway and as it was so warm and a smallish field no one wanted to show their colours too early so Nik set a lovely steady high tempo on the front to discourage any early attacks and to allow her to get to know the course.

Thanks to Aaron Dial for this mid race pic

After 2 laps a few surges occurred however no one wanted to continue on with a move until after 3.5laps I got away with a local rider Kelly and we got a gap of 100m fairly quickly but the gap never grew more than that and we were away for only ~5km before we were brought back, numerous small moves were made over the rest of the course but it seemed most of the girls wanted a print or didn’t want to work to keep moves away.

I was giving a lot of guidance to Nik throughout the race, and had gotten a few funny looks from other girls in the race wondering why I was yelling at her, but its all a learning curve and was a great experience for us to get to race together and for me to be able to give her advice whilst racing.

Coming into the sprint I was sitting second wheel and not rolling through for the last 3km, a young local girl ,Alicia MacDonald, launched the first move in the sprint with still 900m to go, I let her get 15m  on us before I jumped and followed as she was going fast. When I got to her I thought it was to early to sprint but new I had to keep going then as everyone else was coming so sprinted for 800m and took the race out by a bike length.

Nik had just gotten on the back and had been about to come around underneath everyone when Alicia jumped.

Podium girls, I like it when they aren't so tall

NAB 2012 Criterium

Sunday was BCS women's first state open race as a full team… there were butterflies, lots of toilet stops and a few abrupt words prior to the start due to pre-race nerves (this was only Kate F).
From now I will refer toKate Finegan spelt like with a K, and Cait Fraser Jones spelt with a C so as you don't get confused.
 Kate was defending champ and wanting to replicate her win last year, however knew the field was a lot stronger with some internationals in there as well as double the number of riders. Nicole knew her fitness was coming along nicely, and Cait is not that fond of a Criterium so was unsure of how she would go… Race plan was to keep it together early, but ensure we had at least one of us in each of the moves, and if it was still together at about the half-way point Cait was to give it a go and try and rip the field apart. Within the first 10 minutes there had been a few minor attacks, then one of the Belgium girls went up the road, Kate followed within half a lap and the 2 dangled off the front by about 70m for 4 laps, before being joined by Cait, the other Belgium and Amy Bradley of Total Rush. This formed the break of the day, all 5 were working well together and at the 35minute mark overtook the remainder of the field who were all pulled from the race.

Fellow team members Nik and Shantelle had been in this group so got to stand on the sidelines and cheer/laugh at our pain. It was made easy by only needing to cheer for one name; we do what we can ;)

At 10minutes to go Cait asked me what do I want her to do?? I said whatever you like, knowing that she would then attack which was what I wanted her to do to, this would see if we could drop one or 2 of the others in the break, over the next 4 laps Cait and one of the Belgiums attacked a few times but no one was suffering enough to get dropped/strong enough to drop the others. The bell lap came around very qick and that second last corner was the key. Cait layed herself on the line keeping the pace up and I came around the second last corner shoulder to shoulder with the 2 Belgium’s but came out third best and held onto that position till the end. Cait came over the line in 5^th place. 
Thanks to Bendigo Best Cycling Photographer Darren Casey for the photo below 

Cait powering around the course

Post race smiles

NAB 2012 winners, the band aid on the knee for Kate was a post race clumsy incident...

Good result for our first state level team race, we all learnt a lot and hope to build onwards and upwards throughout the season.

Thanks to NAB and Castlemaine cycling club for running the race, and thanks to Matt Wallace mechanic for the day and Cheryle and Gary for team cheer squads...