Hi.
The video of the last stage of Thüringen is here.
Just to keep you all updated, the calendar on Vicki’s web site is now out of date. Vision1 has withdrawn from all races for the rest of the season. (Don’t ask!!!) This has left Vicki scrambling to try to get some racing between now and Worlds. I will update the site when (if??) things get firmed up.
Dave
Hi.
The 6th and final stage has been run and won. A break of 12 riders was allowed to get away after 40km of racing and, as it didn’t have any of the GC contenders it was allowed to gain significant time on the bunch. In the end Fabiana Luperini (Selle Italia Ghezzi) won the stage some 5 minutes and 27 seconds ahead of the yellow jersey (i.e. GC leader’s) group.
Linda Villumsen Serup (Team Columbia HTC Women) held onto the yellow jersey though it was touch and go for a while with one of the riders in the break gaining enough time to be in the virtual lead with 5 kilometres to go.
Vicki looks to have had a reasonable day, finishing with the yellow jersey group in 21st place. Unfortunately she dropped another place on GC to one of the riders in the break and finished in 10thoverall, 3 minutes, 35 seconds behind Villumsen. There wasn’t a lot she could do to defend her 9thplace. Without team mates to help drive the pace Vicki was reliant on Team Columbia HTC to chase the break and of course they were only concerned with closing the gap enough to defend Villumsen’s lead.
I haven’t talked with Vicki since the race finished (she is in the middle of the usual travel that follows a race) but I think she will be reasonably happy with 10th. It could have been better with a little more luck but that’s bike racing. It was a tough tour – of the 90 girls who started the race only 58 finished. Between the hills and the wind and the cobbled sections there was no chance to rest in any of the stages, making it a real hard-woman’s race. Seems that this is Vicki’s kind of racing - I always knew she was nuts! 
I’m not entirely sure what’s next on Vicki’s race program as Vision1 has dropped a lot of races from its plans recently. I think she is going to the Sparkassen Giro on the 2nd of August. I’ll try to confirm that with her and update her calendar for the remainder of the season.
The highlight videos of Stage 4 and Stage 5 are now up on YouTube for those who are interested. I’ll put up a link for Stage 6 when it’s available.
Well until next time God bless,
Dave
You know one of the really sucky things about bike racing? Mechanicals. The bikes we ride are really quite complicated pieces of machinery and cyclists don’t exactly treat them well, riding in rain, sweating on them, handing them over to the tender care of baggage handlers and riding over sharp things on the road. Despite all of this they serve us remarkably well… most of the time.
The weather for Stage 5 was again “shocking” with the rain torrential at times. Not only do wet roads increase the chances of a crash, but also of punctures. The water means that things like glass or sharp stones stick to the tyre, allowing them to work their way through the casing with each turn of the wheel. In the dry these just fall off if they haven’t managed to cut the tread on first contact.
Vicki was doing well, sitting in the front bunch and feeling good. Then bang – flat tyre. At this point how it is supposed to work is that her team car comes up and gives her a new wheel. If everything works as it should then it doesn’t actually take very long. Vicki’s team car was sixth in the convoy and apparently was blocked from getting through. To allow for such a situation there are cars and motorbikes which carry neutral spares that will help anyone in the race. In Vicki’s words she “had to wait for neutral which took eternity to come and then to change”.
By this time the race had gone on leaving Vicki well out the back and having to chase by herself to catch the front bunch again. How this is supposed to work for someone well up on GC is that some of her team mates will wait for her and then help in the chase. Unfortunately due to illness and other things only Vicki and one other of her team are left in the race so she was on her own.
I’ll let Vicki describe what happened next: “I had to time trial hard for 10km to get back to the front bunch. [Which is a pretty big achievement in itself! - Dave] By that time I was exhausted and not long after, the big contenders decided to attack up a climb. That pretty much did me. Then it stared pouring with rain and blowing strong winds. Awful awful.”
“In the end I was left with a group who had no interest in chasing as they had [team mates] up ahead. I talked with the one Dutch National girl – Irene van de Broek – and we agreed to try and attack this bunch. We attempted this and it worked for a little with us sharing the load but then the group caught us again. We kept persisting and managed to reduce the gap a little. In the end I finished 16th [2'29" behind stage winner Emma Johansson] and dropped to 9th on GC [3'35" behind race leader Linda Villumsen Serup]. Pretty frustrated as I did my very best and felt good. Mechanicals strike again!”
Vicki hasn’t had a lot of luck this year. If you remember, she was put out of the running at the National time trial champs in January with another wheel problem. Why do they always strike when things are going well???
Tonight’s stage is the last one of the tour. It is a 118km ramble around Greiz that loops around and doubles back on itself a lot. It’s going to be another tough day in the office for the girls.
The time gaps are now pretty big so it will be a struggle for Vicki to move up the General Classification but “tomorrow is another day and I am determined to come out firing.” Let’s just hope things go her way this time!
A very frustrated Dave signing off until tomorrow.
OK, before I start can I just say that I’m not real happy?
Less than a week ago I was in Italy, going out mid-morning to ride in beautiful, sunny weather with the temperature in the low thirties wearing knicks and a jersey…
As I left the house at 5:45 this morning for my first “real” ride since getting back to Canberra (wind trainer sessions don’t count as “real” rides) it was dark and -2 degrees with the wind chill factor dropping the temperature still further. I was wearing a thermal top, my winter jacket, tights, shoe covers, fleece skull cap and three layers of gloves… and my hands still froze! To add insult to injury my water bottle froze over before the end of the ride. Why, oh why did I come back home??? 
Alright, enough whinging. You will have seen Vicki’s blog about this stage so there isn’t a heap I can add. As she said, Vicki finished 4th on the stage, 1 minute 36 seconds behind Linda Villumsen Serup (Team Columbia-Highroad Women), 14 seconds behind Sarah Düster (Cervélo Test Team) and on the same time as Eva Lechner (Gauss RDZ Ormu-Colnago). This is a super result, especially given the caliber of riders competing in this tour.
Vicki has moved up to 8th on the General Classification, 1 minute 53 seconds behind new leader Linda Villumsen Serup.
Tonight is a 23km individual time trial looping out of Triebes. I’m really hoping Vicki does well. A good result would move her up the GC. A really good result would strengthen her case for selection to represent Aus at the World Championships this year. No pressure though. 
Oh, and while I think about it, there are short highlight packages of the stages being posted on YouTube. Stage 3 isn’t up yet but Vicki makes a few fleeting appearances in both the Stage 1 and Stage 2 videos.
Until tomorrow,
Dave
All I can say is that our mechanic certainly has his cleaning job cut out for him tonight after the drenching in mud and rain that our bikes experienced today. I’ve also been busy scrubbing my once white kit for 10 minutes in the shower hoping it will survive another day of racing. Or maybe not-it’s virtually impossible to keep white kit ‘white’.
Another tough day in the saddle. This tour is great- it just keeps getting harder. There were many series of rolling hills and together with the appalling weather and some pothole filled descents, the peleton was splintered to bits today. One of the real break points for the group was a dodgy, churned up road for a descent which was followed immediately by pinch of a climb through the forest at the 80km mark. This allowed a group of about 15 riders, myself included, to get clear of the bunch. Many riders were understandably taking the descents very cautiously today and were caught out by this immediate transition to a climb. Shortly after this Linda Villumsen of Columbia HTC soloed away and the rest of us struggled to get across to her. This wasn’t for lack of trying as several individual riders attempted to bridge but every move was shut down. Three teams took up the chase-Cervelo, DSB and Nurenberg but again the windy conditions and tired legs meant that it didn’t have a huge effect on the time gap.
With 5km to go single riders again attempted attacks and the one by Sarah Duster (Cervelo) stuck this time. Linda wasn’t coming back and we were going to fight it out for the minor podium spots. I had seen the finish during my warm up and wasn’t particularly excited by the sharp (and now slippery) right hand corner after a fast descent with 300m to go. A Gauss rider (Eva Lechner) hit the front and lead into the descent and I was a few bike lengths from her wheel. I descended well and kept my focus on the right hand corner, careful to not over analyse it but to take it wide and smoothly. I survived it and then was faced with an uphill sprint, trying to claw my way back to Eva. I was gaining on her, but ran out of road and she crossed in third with me finishing 4th. Emma Johanssen,. Marianne Vos and Rasa Leleivyte were hot on my heels.
Time to recover for the time trial tomorrow. I would love a rain-free day but then we don’t always get our own way…… Ok, I would love an incident free day and the chance to do the best that I can. How’s that?
Tune in tomorrow,
Vicki
Well, it looks like I’m out of a job!? Vicki is right though – when the alarm goes off in the morning my body is currently telling me in no uncertain terms that it is the middle of the night and I should go back to sleep… NOW! Jet-lag is a wonderful thing.
Vicki has given you a comprehensive report so I will just add that the official results have Vicki finishing 12th on the stage rather than the 10th she reported. There is often a discrepancy between the position that a rider thinks they achieved and the one that appears in the results. I have never been able to work out whether this is due to the fact the rider tends to be a little busy at the finish, not to mention in oxygen debt, and doesn’t have the time to carefully count the bodies ahead of them or whether the finish line judges don’t overly care about exact positions once all the ones with UCI points are allocated. I suspect it is maybe a little bit of both?
Vicki holds down 16th on the General Classification, 55 seconds behind current leader Luisa Tamanini (Selle Italia-Ghezzi). It’s a ways off yet but it is going to be interesting if Vicki is still within striking distance come the time trial.
Tonight’s stage is once again a rolling loop, this time 128km in length around Schleiz.
Tune in tomorrow for an update… and maybe even another race report from Vicki if you are really lucky!
God bless,
Dave
Given that Dave is probably having real problems waking in the morning in Australia, I will sneak in a quick blog for this stage.
After a solid introduction yesterday, my training (and non-racing) legs are starting to find some spark. It was a longer stage that involved a 125km loop. This meant multiple changes of road direction and with that comes wind changes. It was crucial to stay alert and near the front as a lapse in attention could send you back down the long single line of riders strung out in the gutter. Not a nice place to be.
It’s obvious that Germans love their cobbled roads as we experienced another dose of them today. Great for the power training, particularly when some sections really started to incline. So far I’m really enjoying these types of hills. Much more my style of climbing – you can actually see the top and just have to muster enough power and grit to get over them, then it’s a bit of recovery.
A break of about 8 riders escaped at about the 65km mark, just over the top of one of the many bergs. Vision 1 weren’t represented in this break, however we were fortunate that Red Sun and later DSB were in the same position. We caught the break at 6km to go, thanks to some massive attacks from Marianne Vos. Well, we thought it was the entirety of the break. Trouble was there were still 2 riders who’s manged to sneak off the front of the break away (Luise Tamanini and Charlotte Becker). Pretty sneaky and a good move as they managed to take the win by about 40 seconds.
Another cobbled section to finish with some tram lines thrown in on the last corner. Me and tram lines just don’t mix. (I learnt that lesson at the Ballarat Nationals a year ago.) Today went off without a hitch as I crossed them perpendicularly 
and sprinted in the bunch finishing 10th. I was glad to be able to hold GC position (16th) and hope to do the same tomorrow. Haven’t looked at it yet – I like to take one day at a time. Friday is a 23km time trial which I’m hoping to give a good crack.
Ciao,
Vicki
The International Thüringen Rundfahrt, a 6 stage tour in Germany, started last night with four laps of a rolling 19.5km circuit which included tough cobbled sections. In the end the 78 kilometre stage came down to a fast sprint with some gaps opening up on the line. Marianne Vos (DSB Bank – Nederland Bloeit) won with Emma Johansson (RedSun Cycling Team) second and Rasa Leleivyte (Safi-Pasta Zara Titanedi) third.
Vicki finished in the bunch in 21st place and also holds 21st on GC. She found it a tough race: “It was a lot harder than I expected. That was tough, not only was it pavé there were a lot of broken sections which meant that riders were skidding everywhere. There was a lot of breaking and accelerating which made it very hard on the energy systems. It was a really leg sapping stage and I am hoping it isn’t going to get harder from here. If that is an indication of the rest of the week then this is going to be a tough tour!”
Vicki’s best placed team mate was Nicole with 13th on the stage.
Tonight’s Stage 2 is a rolling 129km loop around Gera. I will try to beat my jet-lag enough to get up early and blog when I know the results.
God bless,
Dave
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