GIRO DONNE: CELEBRATING WITH SCARS

Just when I thought that our team would get through the tour unscathed…we go and have five crashes over two days, not the best of statistics considering two of them were in the time trial! Stage 4, day 5, and it was time to hit the hills, but before hitting the hills, Vicki and Sara were hitting the pavement in an early crash. Nicki got caught behind the pile-up, but all three regained contact soon after with only Vicki sporting scars. Everyone seemed keen to join a break before the climb, so the pace remained relatively high for the first half of the 106km race. From here, the first of two 10km climbs began and it didn’t take long for me to find my place in grupetto! Sara was positioned well and found herself just off the back of the lead group as she prepared for the descent. Vicki and Carlee joined Oenone Wood in the chase bunch, while Nicki and Tiff established position in the third group.

As I chatted away to the fellow members of grupetto, the remnants of my team were chasing hard to make up time on the leaders. The flat roads lasted a mere 10kms before an 11km hill top finish on ‘Monte Serra’. The crowds were lining the roadside today with two intentions; 1) to watch the Giro Donne grovel up the climbs 2) to watch their local hero Fabiana Luperini take the pink jersey, and after reading her name written in every possible direction and font on the asphalt, how could she not impress?! While she celebrated her win, Sara was pursuing a top 20. Carlee had spent the last 5kms towing Vicki up the climb after desperation for feed from our team car saw her taken out by another rider, resulting in patches on both knees and elbows! Nicki and Tiff rode tempo to the finish, while grupetto called ‘piano’ and rolled in 21 minutes down!

We had a four hour transfer to ‘Ispra’ after an 8-point turn to get the van to the bottom of the hill. Carlee and I, now nicknamed pink 1 and pink 2 after purchasing the Giro ‘I was here’ pink souvenir shirts, exchanged race stories to pass the time. I reflected on the first climb, when a policeman who learnt my name yesterday drove past on the motor bike shouting out ‘Peta!’… and when a team car took out half the grupetto bunch while trying to pass up the inside… or my favourite memory, of grovelling alongside two girls holding onto their team car up ‘Monte Serra’! It was a blessing to arrive at a new accomodation, that supplied us with good food, English euro sport, and a dismal 30 minutes of internet before the connection cut out. I scored a room with Nikki, finally a firm bed, and a balcony that you could land a plane on!

Today I was faced with a 9km time trial. Usually they are far from exciting, but when two of your team members crash, and another takes the win, there is plenty to talk about on the drive home, which for me was an hour after everybody else as I chose to stay and take podium shots for Vicki! It had been joked about the night before that Carlee, who was starting in front of Vicki, would be the ‘rabbit’. Carlee took this to the extreme, crashing early on due to some gravel on a roundabout and drawing blood, of which we assume Vicki smelt, and chased like an animal! But now we can’t open the cycling news homepage without seeing Carlee sprawled in the top corner as leading photo (pictured above)…way to get the sponsors name out there girl. Sara also misread a corner and came down, losing valuable seconds that would have seen her on the podium for sure!

When Vicki crossed the line, I heard the word ‘prima’ meaning first. Initially, she didn’t believe my Italian translation but as the time trial came to an end, and only the climbers were left on the course, we knew she had claimed the biggest win of her career! It was ironic that she won the stage after her minor falls the day prior, requiring her to grace the podium with patches on both knees (pictured above). After a spray of champagne it was time for testing, so while she quickly filled a cup full of urine, I was avoiding my new edition police man stalker. He had hassled me every time I had ridden past him roadside, and was then calling to me while he was leading a rider in the time trial…it’s times like these where flattery turns to nerves. Spirits are now high, aside from the thought of tomorrow’s climbs and predicted weather forecast.

Results: Giro Donne, Stage 4, Road Race, Calcinaia - Prato A Calci/Monte Serra, 106.4kms
Results: Giro Donne, Stage 5, Individual Time Trial, Novara, 9.3kms

Photo 1 & 3 courtesy of WomensCycling.

GIRO DONNE: FLAT & CHAT

Stage 2 started at ‘Ca Tiepolo Porto Tolle’, finishing right outside our hotel after 122kms of racing. For the second day in a row, the team managed front line on the starting tape with our Teschners on show, but I didn’t spend long there before drifting to the back to discuss specifics of my end-of-season holiday with Carlee. The pace was higher, the sprint was quicker, but once again nothing much exciting happened. Sara tried to keep me up the front coming into the sprint, but we got lost in the confusion of the bunch and watched on as Ina Teutenberg took line honours for the second day in a row. I was grateful to spend two nights at our waterfront hotel in ‘Rosolina Mare’. It meant that after racing, I was able to return to my air conditioned room, watch the final 70kms of the Tour de France, and sit on the balcony and paint my toenails.

While Tiff was investing in a blow up toy and a new hairstyle…braids (pictured with Carlee and Nicki below), I was enjoying the first of six servings at dinner. This feast is divided into separate portions. First comes the bread, then salad, then pasta, then vegetables, then meat, and finally dessert. At this particular hotel, dessert was watermelon, and I was devastated on our first night when I missed out on a serving. So when the waitress bought out a platter, I was once again heartbroken when the doping controllers carried the massive serving dish to their own table! All other teams erupted in disgust as us Aussie’s watched on eagerly, so when the controllers were done taking their portions, they kindly bought the remainder our way =) I was full from dinner, and so unbelievably tired that on my way back up to my room, I didn’t even hold the door of the lift for a cripple!

Today we were faced with another 123kms of racing over flat terrain. The stage from ‘S.M. Maddalena Occhiobello’ to ‘Altedo Malalbergo’ went quicker than I expected, with short lived attacks making up the majority of the race. Being in the thick of it meant that after the live coverage of the Tour de France, I was able to get some air time on local television. It was no surprise that a late run at inside suicide had me hit the barriers with 200m to go (somehow I‘m alive), and no miracle that Ina took her third stage win for the tour. So we are closing in on the final hours of day four, and I‘m still extremely tired considering the ease of the kilometres that have come and gone. Tomorrow marks our first day in the hills, and the first real chance for the GC contenders to make their mark. I’m nervous as to how the legs will hold up and it seems that even grupetto is looking like a fair challenge at the moment!

Results: Giro Donne, Stage 2, Road Race, Ca Tiepolo Porto Tolle - Rosalina Mare, 122.7kms
Results: Giro Donne, Stage 3, Road Race, Maddalena Occhiobello - Altedo Malalbergo, 122.8kms

Photo 1 courtesy of WomensCycling.

THE GIRO D’ITALIA A.K.A THE ‘GIRO DONNE’

Welcome to the Giro! I say that on behalf of our ten member team. One director sportif; Warren McDonald. One mechanic; Wayne Nichols. Two soigneurs; Christine O’Connor And Beth Duryea. And six athletes; Carlee Taylor, Tiffany Cromwell, Sara Carrigan, Nikki Egyed, Vicki Whitelaw and myself. It was a three hour drive from the AIS base in Castronno Italy, south east to ‘Mantova’. Forty steps led us to the third floor of our building, and the passage way led us to our little heat box of a room. We had a few hours of relaxation prior to racing and it was clear that I wouldn‘t be spending this optional time in my room! Vicki and I chose the single beds by the window, meaning that Carlee (pictured below) scored the double in the centre, which is why the huge mosquito welts all over her body are such a surprise!

It was a 3 minute ride to our time trial start. We were randomly seeded yet I managed to score the first run at 8:30pm, with the last rider off at 10pm! We were decked out with time trial helmets and disk wheels for the massive 1.2kms. It was short, hard, and after doing the turn 10 times in warm up, I snail paced around it, finishing 34th. Carlee was lucky enough to hold it up on the corner after skipping her back wheel, and then spent an hour trying to find her way back to the hotel. She took a wrong turn and approached the police for help, but with only four words of Italian in her vocabulary they were forced to bring in an interpreter. Just as they were loading her into the car and announcing her name over a loud speaker, Tiff’s Dad came to the rescue and she was home just in time for gelati.

After a sleepless night (I would guesstimate a solid 4 hours due to siesta), we made the 1.5 hour trek to the start of stage 1 in ‘Asola’. It was 130kms of head wind on a pancake flat course finishing in ‘Lendinara’. The day was uneventful to say the least, and if I had to pick a highlight it would be a toss up between Nikki being called an ‘idiot’ over the loud speaker during team sign on for not knowing her race number, and when Carlee shit herself after I screamed ‘occhio!’ and slapped her thigh just for a good laugh. It was a positive thing that the temperatures were soaring, as it meant that feeding from the car was required often, and people were fighting to return to the convoy just to break the boredom. I ran over about 4 bidons, had melted nutella smeared all over my bike, and allowed Oenone Wood to convince me to stay on for a holiday at the end of the season.

The race heated up in the final 20kms for the predicted mass finish. There wasn’t a single crash among the 130 starters, and even the forgetfulness of Wazza in radioing through the left hand corner at 200m to go couldn’t bring us down! I finished in 12th, and I only mention it because it brings our team earnings to 6 euro each. Another transfer has bought us to ‘Rosolina Mare’, where I have access to a mirror and visions of my glorious arm, leg, sock, neck, helmet strap and sunnies tan lines…and even two small forehead ones from the air holes in my helmet! On a more positive note, we celebrated Tiff’s 20th birthday today! A gelati cake was organised, along with chocolates for a final dessert, of which most hadn’t survived the heat (pictured above). With Tiff sorting through presents, Nikki on the phone to her partner Tyler, and the Tour de France highlights on television, it’s a happy vibe in the room tonight.

Results: Giro Donne, Prologue, Mantova, 1.2kms
Results: Giro Donne, Stage 1, Road Race, Asola - Lendinara, 131.5kms

THE FINAL FOUNDATION

As some of you are back home sleeping, I’m double checking the contents of my packed bag beside me, hoping that I have everything required for the Giro D’Italia over the coming nine days. We start racing tomorrow, and I’m not nervous, scared, or restless. I think I’ll merely be relieved when it’s over. Our opening stage is a 1.2km prologue, followed by close to 800kms of racing and with some difficult terrain I wouldn’t mind being a climber right about now! The remaining members of our team arrived in Castronno this week in Carlee Taylor, Sarah Carrigan and Nikki Egyed. Carlee has been here since Monday, which has given her and I plenty of time to reacquaint and be our normal selves again (pictured below), while Sarah and Nikki arrived late Thursday. Hopefully the Giro is first-class, and instead of shared bathroom facilities, hand washing and no supplied bedding, maybe we can be pampered elite athletes instead =)


My week on the bike has simply been recovery from testing at the Mapei - human performance lab. My first experience at the centre saw me learn how to count in Italian, another approach for flooding the stationary bike in sweat, and a new pain tolerance for lactate ear pricking! Skinfolds and haematocrit levels are easily tested and are almost painless, our submax test on the other hand is designed to hurt a little. It’s a step test performed on a stationary bike that measures your heart rate and power output. Starting at 100 watts, the power is increased by 25 watts every 3 minutes as a lactate sample is taken from the ear. This continues until your lactate reaches 6m/mol. Unfortunately, reading 5.9m/mol, as I did, means you must complete another level…which had me up at 12m/mol! Unlucky or karma? Today was void of sweat, with the team able to laze around in Varese centre after photos with the mayor (pictured below).

The U19 Junior World boys (pictured below: Me, Michael Matthews, Alastair Loutit, Michael Hepburn, Leigh, Michael Freiberg, Tiff) provided us with a short spout of entertainment this week. On Tuesday, Hepburn, Freiburg and I headed down to the garage in search of a long lost rainbow inflatable swimming pool, measuring 2 metres in diameter. After a bit of a rinse, a degrease, a scrub, and three more rinses it was time to blow it up. ‘Blowing’ up the pool soon turned into ‘pumping’ up the pool, which turned into ‘taping’ up the pool with a whole roll of masking tape. Half filling the pool took a solid half hour, before bathing in the pool was able to take place. In the end, the pool wasn’t even that great! But it was the feeling of success that mattered in the end. Unfortunately, today I had to empty it, which took almost as long as it’s assembly, and resulted in an extra hole that I will now have to tape up on return!

There have been other nightly approaches to the increasing temperatures. Vicki initially started out sleeping with the fan on, then realized the breeze that develops overnight from the cool air outside is much nicer. So a mosquito net was sent from home in Australia so that she wouldn’t get eaten alive with the window open. When we have to close the window during overnight storms, I find Vicki scattered across the cold tiles in the lounge! For the U19 boys upstairs the heat is worse, but now that they have departed for a tour across Italy, we no longer have to pity them. After taking out the first stage and holding onto the yellow jersey, confidence levels will be high for the coming World Championships in South Africa for them. Well I hope you all enjoy watching the Tour de France while we girls suffer in our own miniscule version of the Pyrenees, and I trust that you all have your fingers crossed for us!