Femme Vitesse Bendigo Round 1 - Kosdown Performance Cycling

3:39 pm Unknown 0 Comments

In Bendigo town centre they shut down a few main roads for the ladies to race the first of 2 rounds of the Femme Vitesse criterium series.

This year I pulled together a team of like minded ladies to race for Kosdown Performance Cycling(KPC). Tessa Fabry, Dale Maizels, Sarah Knights, and new KPC scholarship rider Teagan Westendorf joined me for the 1 hour race.



The weather was warm and the course superb. From the start line the course turned left to a slight incline up Williamson St and left into the back straight on Myers St that had a bit of a headwind. The left hand turn into Mundy St was open for riders to take it 4-5 wide and it was a fast rolling pace each lap back onto Lyttleton Terrace.



There was no neutral first lap in Division 1/A-Grade, and I was pretty sure they were going to hit the incline hard to catch out a few riders. Afterwards, I spoke to a few ladies coming up from a B-Grade field who were surprised at the initial pace. A good warmup is essential!

The race progressed with 3 intermediate sprints and my KPC team were positioned well in the bunch with Tessa and Teagan attacking, Dale and Sarah closing down breaks, and myself hanging on for dear life!

Unfortunately there was a crash in the last 10-15mins that took down 4 riders on the wide fast top corner. All riders walked away ok and the race was able to be restarted to finish off the last four laps - FAST.


It was great to race in the sun on a great course outside of Melbourne that I later found out on Strava is used for the Victorian Elite Criterium Championships. It certainly has some character, and was worthwhile racing to recon for the Champs later in the year.

The final round is Sun 2nd March on Richmond Boulevard hot-dog circuit. It is going to be a tough race that will definitely be ripped apart over 1 hour of racing for Division 1. Come and join us from 3:40pm.