Vicki Whitelaw

Ok, before you all go and get excited thinking that I’ve suddenly qualified for the Olympic team, let me assure you that’s not the case. Awwwww

However my “road to Beijing” comes in the form of a 10km climb that has an uncanny resemblance to the 11km climb that the cyclists will encounter in just under a fortnight in China.  That is, of course, if the road race is not delayed due to the smog in that city.  :P

After quite a bit of searching in our local region, Oenone and our wonderful sport scientist, Laura have located the climb that will provide several training sessions worth of fun and simulation of what the legs and hearts will go through.  It hasn’t been an easy task to locate such a climb given the uniqueness of the one in Beijing.  Based on a reconnaissance of the course by the Aussies last year, we now have detailed information of the course profile.  The thing about the climb is that it is has an extremely inconsistent gradient which will make things quite interesting.  It will be difficult to get into a rhythm and may mean that the ‘pure climbers’ of the peleton have harder time of ripping it up.  This is good news for our girls who prefer the shorter ‘power’ type of bergs (ie. they all weigh more than 50kg!).

We rode it twice, taking about 33 minutes each time.  Well, I took quite a little longer as I mashed through some big gears and a painfully low cadence to achieve that strength endurance session that cyclists so fondly talk about.  This method of training worked ok on the lower slopes of the climb however with approximately 2km to go the climb became severely steep and there was no way I was going to stay in the saddle then!  Whilst I didn’t have an accurate gradient data, at a guess, I’d say around 20%.  Though that could just be me loving to exaggerate.

There were many other cyclists tackling the climb this particular day which can always be frustrating as those adorable Italian wheel suckers I talked about in a previous blog are still enjoying the ‘wheel sucking’ game.  I certainly felt for Sara and Oenone who when putting in their surges on the climb would soon find another cyclist jump on their wheel, thrilled by the ‘race’ to the top.  I suppose it gives them good practice for Beijing when other riders will do the same but in this training session, well, I’d prefer a bit of peace and quiet myself.

Fresh before starting the climb	Sara and Vicki

After a speedy motor pacing session back around the lake and this lovely part of the world, it was time for lunch at Bar Cavour.  Rochelle has taken a particular liking to the lunch time salads and has one there every day.  It’s just the company that may vary.

The salad at Bar Cavour

After 4 hours on my road bike, it was time to hop on our little pink towny bike to get to the bar (pictured below).  What do you think of my new race bike?  Might have to work a little on the aerodynamics but it could work?

A new race bike?

As if we hadn’t been out enough that day, it was then into dinner in Varese.  Breaking the habit of our usual pizzeria, Zac showed us another nice and secret restaurant in a lane way.  When we arrived at 7pm, we were the only diners.  ( Way too early in Italy for dinner).  However when we left, it was packed out.

Sara, Vicki, Laura and Beth	Johnny, Vicki and Jack

As I write this I’m into another solid block of training.  After two big tours behind me, I feel my hardiness for this level of riding has certainly improved.  We have a race in Germany this weekend- a criterium on Saturday and short 87km road race on Sunday.  There will be some heavy driving time: approximately 10 hours to Germany on Friday and then another 10 hours back to Italy on Sunday directly after the race.  Then we turn around 5 days later and head back to Holland for the following weekend.  Let’s just hope we don’t end up with heavy travel legs so we can come out firing for the racing.

That’s all the latest.  Whilst I’m still sizzling in the Italian summer I’m not missing Winter in Australia one bit.  I heard it was -3 deg this morning in Canberra.  Some how I don’t think Dave went out for a ride.

I’ll blog again after the weekend with all the news from Germany.

Ciao

I love racing. Especially when you’re feeling in form and prepared. However to get that physical form you require for racing, well, you kind of have to do the training thing. No easy way around it. (Well, there might be in the form of drug taking but I will never ever go down that path!) So I have to set my mind and body to the other form of performance enhancement – training. I can’t say I’m always 100% motivated for it either. Sorry to disappoint any readers with this fact. At the end of each day, we are required to keep a training diary and one of the questions asked is to rank our level of motivation for the day from “extremely unmotivated” at one end of the scale to “extremely motivated” at the other end. Fortunately I can say that this week has been a highly motivated one. Not really sure why. Maybe it’s because I’ve been deserted by every other female cyclist at the AIS base (they are curerntly doing a 4 day tour in France) and so I’ve got nothing better to do but train my little legs off. Maybe I’m feeling on a high from recent success (that can often do it). Anyway, whilst motivation is high, the sun is shining and my ipod is pumping out some great music, I’m going to enjoy while it lasts.

The Australian Team at Cento

Brief summary of Cento race last weekend. We didn’t quite podium – Oenone finished 4th. She’d being very aggressive all day, riding her way into most breaks that went down the road. As a team, we worked well until about 60% through the race when a few hesitations cost us. We’d been attentive at the start, initiating moves as well as covering them and it was quite different to be riding with such a large number on our team (9 riders). Whilst we had Oenone in the break which extended to 2 minutes with 20km to go,  unfortunately she was the only one in a break of 15 and several of the other teams had at least 2 riders up there. So Oenone certainly had her work cut out for her in the sprint finish given she was quite outnumbered and that her legs weren’t really working by the end of the race. Kind of need those to function in order to sprint well!

It was a great learning experience for our team and that’s important if we are to continue to develop the level of riding amongst us Australian girls. It was a good mix of first timers and the very experienced in a UCI ranked race. There were a couple of crashes – always are, expecially when cobbles are involved. Fortunately, I wan’t one of them! Seems that I’ve got over my early season strike rate with a crash per race. This is good news! Maybe Carlee Taylor is taking over in that department. (Joking Carlee ) I think it’s all about testing your limitations when you first come over and step up into the European races. A significant proportion of them were my fault as I was figuring it all out and then others were just plain bad luck. That’s road racing. Not sure it puts my husband’s mind at any great ease though.

It has been gorgeous weather in Varese at the moment. Clear blue skies and even though we’re in the middle of summer, there are snow-capped moutains bordering Lake Maggiore. Beautiful. I’m also very glad that the early summer humidity that had me sprawled out on the tiled kitchen floor has decreased substantially making sleeping heaps better. I’ve been training really well with Tiffany, Rochelle and Oenone, who is looking in good form for the Olympics. We’ve got some killer sessions planned on the mountains around here for this weekend. Not sure how I will be Monday but a massage scheduled for that afternoon should sort things out.

Until then, ciao.

Here’s some action shots of last weekend in Cento. Looks like we were having fun.

Waiting for the start	Starting another lap
Carlee	Tiff
Vicki	Leonie

Just thought I’d sneek a quick blog in today to let you all know the latest and so I’m not accused of being irregular with my blogging.

The Aussie team is off to the town of Cento, Italy – a 3 hour drive from our base in Castronno. We are fortunate to be taking 9 riders including the very experienced members of Oenone Wood, Rochelle Gilmore and Emma Rickards. The team here at the base has changed quite a lot since I started here at the AIS in March. The team’s average age has dropped signifcantly, although you can still count on me to keep it above 20!  With a new team comes the challenge of riding together as a team and given the profile of today’s course, I can’t think of a better opportunity to do that. It is likely to be fast and involves both some wide roads and some more technical narrow and cobbled sections. With each team allowed up to 10 riders, it’s possible there will be about 120 riders starting the race, many of whom will be Italians. Rochelle won this race 2 years ago and will be looking for the win today so the Aussies will go out firing and at the same time tactically savvy.

After 5 days of easy training I can’t say I’m feeling fabulously fresh however it’s not something to be too concerned about as you never really know until you launch into the race. I am hoping to be able to fill you in on a positive note when I blog tomorrow. Ciao.

A big hello to everyone again. I’m back from the grand tour and honestly am feeling quite exhausted.  It seems to always hit you a few days after the finish of the tour, never immediately.  I’m walking around our apartment in Castronno, feeling foggy in the head and preferring the couch and the cool tiled floor to a bike saddle.  Thank goodness that we’re down for a recovery week of training.  Apparently this will have us all bouncing back next week.  Hopefully this will be the case for the other girls staying here as they are off to France for the Tour of Limousin.  Me?  I will be left to my own devices.  Scary thought.  Well, actually Sara Carrigan and Oenone will be staying in Varese from next week until the Olympics so that should be some good training company.

I’m overjoyed that the potato eating has once again ceased.  Well, at least the powdered stuff.  I think I can still bring myself to eat sweet potato as I don’t really associate it with ‘racing’ and ‘tours’.  I do think that good nutrition played a huge role again in getting me through the tour.  Even though I can’t really look at potato at the moment I think it was vital to my time trial win!  The same goes for all the ‘gels’ and Powerade that we consume for the sake of calories on tour.  I certainly wouldn’t opt for any of these whilst just doing regular training.  Special thanks must go to our soineurs on tour – Christine O’Connor and Beth Durham - who not only kept me topped up with plenty of fuel but made me feel human again after each day of racing with a great massage.

I’ve had a chance to read my husband’s blog entries and I must say that it’s really quite an accurate account given that he only had my brief text messages as well as some cyclingnews.com reports.  Can’t believe how consistent he was.  Every day!  Makes me feel a little ashamed of my rather irregular blogging.

I’d like to send a big thank you to everyone at home who have posted on my Guestbook or emailed me words of encouragement and congratulations.  It means a lot to me and makes me feel very connected with home.

I thought I’d give some more details on my stage win, though not give away too many of my trade secrets.  ;)  Thursday – Stage 5 started like any other day on tour.  By this stage I was feeling like longer sleep-ins and it was quite an effort to drag myself out of bed that morning.  I’d expressed at the start of the tour that I’d like to put in a solid time trial performance however I wasn’t at all nervous and actually felt abnormally relaxed. What was there to stress about?  I’d put in the hard training and, thanks to God, I have stayed healthy and have been steadily improving with each week of training.  In addition, unlike a road race where there are so many extraneous variables that can present themselves to affect the outcome of the race, in a time trial it’s just me and my bike against a ticking clock.

I had a chance to warm up on the course when we arrived however this was on my road bike as final preparations were being made to the time trial machine.  This gave me the opportunity to suss out the course to ensure I didn’t take any wrong turns.  (Bit hard as the entire course was cordoned off!)  I can’t say I really rode it with any decent speed as Carlee Taylor and I rolled along and chatted away.  Since I was ranked 30th overall it was 1.5 hours after the first rider started that I rolled down the ramp.  Knowing it was only 9.3km and fairly flat disappointed me a little as I had hoped for a greater distance in a tour to split up the GC riders a little more.

I passed the time in my team van with loud music booming from my iPod. I love listening to music as it takes me into my own little world and always evokes positive memories and good feelings. A favourite is “Eye of the Tiger”. With 45 minutes to the start I hopped on the rollers for a spin.  I tend to prefer windtrainers to provide some resistance for warm-up however this was the method today as there is only so much equipment that we can transport on tour. Anyway, the rollers certainly get your cadence up, if not the heart rate.

In the start house

Once it was my turn to roll down the ramp, I was still feeling quite abnormally relaxed. This is the time to adopt the ‘race face’ – cool and collected and hiding any emotions from the TV cameras.  The initial 3km involved negiotiating 3 roundabouts and my legs felt terrible from the gun! However, with expereince, I’m learning to ignore that burning feeling as there is no escaping the pain of time trialling.  From the start, I don’t think there was ever a conscious decision to carry crazy speed through every roundabout and corner. It just happened and I was in some sort of weird zone.  The 3km and 8km marks involved U-turns which is always a little scary on a disc wheel and in my mind now I can visualise how I took these turns, along with every other corner of the course… out of control! In fact, with each corner, it felt I was getting closer and closer to the gravel on the side of the road and felt my rear wheel skip and slide on several occasions. Apprently this was also visible to the staff in the follow vehicle who were starting to sweat. With 3km to go I caught my rabbit, my team mate Carlee. Knowing her strength for time trials, I knew that something had to have happened for such an early catch. I found out later she’d slid out on one of the early roundabouts and had unfortunately caught the attention of the photographers.  Why do they always seem to capture us at out worst?

The last 1km is a bit of a blur. I just buried myself but at the same time tried to maintain some core and central stability to keep those legs turning furiously.  I crossed the line with the Italian commentator giving an emphatic ’1st place’ scream… though at first I doubted my translation.  I was asked by my team mates whether it had felt fast.  Perhaps I’m not tuned into this side of things yet and need to experience more time trials to know whether I’ve put in a great performance.  The difficult thing is that they always hurt and to weigh up those sensations would always lead me to say – “I don’t think I went that well!”

I had to wait for another 30 riders to complete the course though I didn’t sit nervously at the finish line as I still didn’t quite believe the result.  Instead I wandered back to the team camp, fueled up some more (you expend sooooo much energy after a 9km time trial!) and then was informed with a few riders left to race that I should start to drink a lot of water as the winner of every stage has compulsory drug testing.  Yes, that means you have to pee in a cup which is then taken to a laboratory to assess for prohibited supplements. The time at which it has taken athletes to produce 75ml of urine varies from 10 minutes to 7 hours!  I certainly wanted to make it quick but it’s amazing how stage fright can set in when someone is watching you pee!  On this occasion it took about 1.5 hours - mainly due to other riders ahead of me having their own difficulties in providing a sample!
 
The presentation went down well.  It’s always fun to spray the crowd and other placegetters with champagne!

I think I’ve got the hang of this now…

So there it is!  It’s been good to write it down for future reference and preparation.  Hopefully I can continue to improve on this performance in the second part of the season.  As indicated in the news section of my website, I would love to qualify for this year’s World Championships in this discipline.  I’ve done all I can as far as posting results and now I’m in the hands of the Australian selectors.
 
Here’s some more photos of the day. My team mate, Peta ALWAYS carries a camera… just in case!

The podium

Me & Rochelle (Gilmore)