Victorian Metro Championships & Cycling Victoria Geelong Time Trial

11:05 pm Unknown 0 Comments

I'm not sure what the history is around the Metro vs Country Championships, in fact I'd like to see a paragraph per race on the Cycling Victoria site to describe who these races are named after (e.g. Cecil Shore, Fred Icke), maybe a some history about the race and a winners honour roll.

Although the numbers were low in the women's grades, the best part was the racing was still on and still red HOT!

Warming UP with awesome autumn colour

The masters women raced with all age groups together for the 56km. The steady climb out of town whittled the field down to 3 before the first left hand turn to cross the freeway. Nonie Carr, Jo O'Shaughnessy and I were to battle out the rest of the 50km race together.

There was not much to report during the main part of the race except rolling turns, a few leg testers on some hills, comments on the weather being ok, and the thick smoke from a farmer burning off up the climb.

The main climb starts at about 35km along the course and is pretty sedate at the start then kicks and kicks harder again. Every single year I am dropped on this hill. This year I was determined that this would not be the case and steam trained over the top first. I had a small gap but fumbled my gears, dropping my chain as I desperately tried to get into the big ring to spin downhill.


I wanted to bring someone with me to the end and it was Nonie that chased back on. We gathered ourselves after the descent and had about 9-10km to the finish. There were a few rolling hills before the final descent, but I couldn't remember how many were to come before the highway.

We were still doing a solid pace but I knew I had to try something on the last hill at 5km to go. So I gave it everything and it was just enough to get away, but as I saw to the top of the hill it was not the highway home and there was still another climb to come - I had a moment of doubt that I could keep the pace on for one more hill.

I just focussed my mind on the rest of the ride being all downhill as I struggled up the last lump to then zoom down the freeway. There was a moment of relief that I had made it over the top first, but Nonie had caught me on the other descent so I needed to keep the pace on hard chasing my own demons downhill to the finish. It wasn't pretty, but it was pretty FAST coming in at 55kmph, I don't know what I was thinking, but I pulled out a sprint to the line and finished first!

Podium shot


This was one of the early road races I had competed in when I first started racing and it was really great to have beaten the hill and taken home the Metro Masters Women Championships win.




I have been resisting for a while now, but finally accepted Shane's help in the last month with preparation for the time trial in Geelong. This was my first TT (outside the tour last month) where I could test out my form and see if I could get a better average speed and good 20min power number in competition. For some reason CV had decided I should be in A-Grade for this Open event.

We had formulated indoor sessions, tweaked the equipment, eaten the right food, slept like royalty... but sometimes on race day - you don't feel like racing :(

I have no idea what the problem was, I could barely string a sentence together and the last thing I felt like doing was a hard interval session. This is where preparation is key, and experience pays off. I slapped myself around and got into automatic mode to get setup for the warmup, got it done and onto the start line.

Warmup Selfies!


Generally I am very poor at judging time gaps and working out if I am making time or losing time in a TT. With this new out & back course in Geelong it took all the estimation and calculation out of it and I just had to judge where on the road I was each lap relative to my opponents while riding as hard as I could.  So on the first lap I took note where I passed the other ladies I saw in A-Grade while struggling to hold power numbers I was comfortably cranking out the week prior.

The next 2 laps I judged if I was up or down the road from that first lap and knew I was in the chance for a podium position. We finished up and I compared times with my mates from B-Grade, if I had have been in my usual grade I would have won the category! Up for this next challenge I knew that I was not near winning time from Lisa Hanley - but I wanted to know how far off. No results were provided except for 1st place in each women's grade.


If my mood was sour before the race - it was darker afterwards not knowing what the result was that I had travelled and put the last month of effort into preparing for. Needless to say I'm pretty results driven person! I left a message with the club to update the online results and in the end I went back to the hotel in Torquay to try and relax.

While pottering on the internet waiting for the Giro to start, I see a message come through on Facebook from the team boss that I had come 3rd! AMAZING! The data wasn't anything to be proud of so I was not confident of any result, but the end result was pretty good. Massive thanks to Shane for his direction over the last few weeks - get low and go aero!

Woo Hoo! Podiums! YAY!


Late night beach walks with my beardy man