That breaking feeling

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Geelong Women's World Cup - March 3, 2007

What a frustrating feeling - to ride 120km thinking only about the finish and then to have your equipment break with only 500m to go! I'm not exactly sure what happened but by the look of my bike I think I must have hit a pot hole. The chain jumped off the rear derailluer and as I continued to pedal, the derailluer became a mangled mess.

My teammate Sigrid [Corneo] had to push me the last 500m to the line. The bunch was only sprinting for fourth but it would have been nice to have a sprint as I was feeling great all day. When my chain jumped off I nearly crashed, banging my left knee very hard on the handlebars. It looks like I have two knee caps at the moment! I hope it's nothing serious, it looks like severe bruising.

The race was extremely boring for most of the day, an early group got away and these riders appeared to be swapping off at a constant pace. The main group was out for a casual stroll until things livened up in the last two laps. It was T-mobile who went to the front performed an impressive team trial, bringing back the three minutes to the lead group in just one lap.

With one lap to go the bunch was all together and I was getting excited. I was positioned well for the last time up the climb, about 10-15 riders back. Nicole and Oenone took off on the climb at a flying pace and Nikki Egyed was able to follow. These three riders stayed away to take the podium positions. I was really hoping that with the large size of the bunch and the crosswinds, that the three riders would be caught, although those riders were a level above today, and they well deserved their victories!

Well, that was the Geelong World Cup for me. It could have finished a little better for our team, we did have Sigrid in the break most of the day, and Olivia Gollan had amazing legs, it just wasn't our day.

My next race will be the GP Costa Etrusca in Italy on the 25th of March, until then I'll be training on the coast of West Australia!

Geelong World Cup Polar data:

Distance: 111km
Time: 3hrs 4 mins (unofficial time)
Average Speed: 36km/hr
Average HR: 170bpm
Max HR: 208bpm

Rochelle Gilmore