Trek launches new "Trek Down Under" blog

Trek Australia has recently launched a stylish new blog which is one of the best sources for all of the latest gossip about Trek bikes. It includes media releases, race reports from their supported riders and random Trek news! Check it out at

http://trekbikesaustralia.typepad.com/trekdownunder/

and thank you James Collins for the flattering wrap up about yours truly!

December 12, 2008
Trek Supported Rider Myfanwy Galloway

Across Australia, Trek Bicycles Australia supports many riders through local Trek dealers. These riders ride and compete at a variety of different levels, from bunch rides to Club races to National level competitions.

One rider to recently come on board as a Trek Supported rider is Myfanwy "Miffy" Galloway, supported through Canberra dealer Ride Shop. Earlier this year Miffy, along with a few other Aussie juniors, traveled to the US to race for a team there for just over a month. Now she's back home in Canberra and has a busy summer of racing planned, on board her new Trek Madone 6.9 Pro frameset.



She recently completed an ACTAS training camp on the NSW South Coast and then jumped straight into competition at the Tour of Bright. Despite that being her first major tour as an Elite Woman, she rode very strongly to finish 5th overall! This was against a field of experienced women racers from around the country.



As well as being a regular at the Canberra Cycling Club crit's at the Stromlo circuit, Miffy will be racing at the Bay Criterium Series January 2-6, the Australian National TT and Road titles January 7-10 and then hopefully the Oceania Road Race and the Women's tour of NZ.

Sounds like a busy summer! You can keep up to date with Miffy's racing and read her race reports on her blog.

Thanks to Greg Long for the photos.

Some photos

here are some photos of me and the new bike courtesy of photographer extraordinaire Greg Long:








you can see more of Greg's work at http://greglong.photoeventplus.com/

After a pretty successful day yesterday, I have to admit I was a little worried that I wouldn’t live up to yesterday’s standards. Regardless, I was still feeling pretty good and was looking forward to giving everything up the climb. This stage was 56.5km with a climb up the beautiful Mt Hotham at 26.5km in. In addition, there were also two intermediate sprints, one at 16km and the other at the base of the climb (26.5km). The race set off at a pretty cruisey pace however it wasn’t long before attacks were being launched. Vicki had been giving me advice and mentoring me all weekend and she told me simply not to chase anything and to save myself for the climb, so that is what I did! Chloe was leading the sprint competition and her goal for the day was to hopefully maintain her lead, however a small breakaway made by Veronica Dudderidge saw her jump clear and pick up maximum sprint points in both sprints. Meanwhile, the pack was rolling along at a comfortable pace with the 3 sprinters from yesterday playing out front and debating on who was going to chase down the break. Bridie O’Donnell than launched an attack and the pack recognised this as another possible threat, giving a time trialist a significant head start on the climb and were quick to respond! Vicki chased and I was hot on her heels with the pack strung out behind us and we caught the two lead riders at the base of the hill. In similar fashion to yesterday, the pace was set from the base of the climb. This climb could be divided into 3 10km sections and this made it easier to tackle both from a mental and physical point of view. I had analysed each section of the climb and recognised where the danger spots were and possible places to attack. Slowly but surely, riders started to drop off the back and by the time we reached the 2nd section (which was predominantly false flat) we had about 10 riders left in the pack. The false flat gave us a chance to regain our breath and Lisa Jacobs took advantage of this to attack us and launch a solo attack up the road. Going into this stage, Lisa was about 17sec ahead of me and so to let her get up the road was a bad idea. I tried to get around the pack to chase to no avail and attempted to get the rest of the pack to help me chase but they were not interested, so I was left with no choice but to try and chase her back myself. Thankfully, fellow Canberran Narelle Hards came to my aid and help me keep the pace on. Unfortunately we weren’t making up any ground and she ended up wining the stage 2min ahead of us. As we approached the last section of the climb, the pack had dwindled to about 6 riders most of which who featured in the road stage yesterday. The third section was made up of pinches of 7, 9.7 and 10% and was definitely taking the sting out of my legs. I was trying my hardest to stay on when Shara Gillow launched an attack just shy of the KOM. The small group didn’t have the legs to chase so we continued to ride at our solid pace, trying to minimise our losses. Once over the KOM, we were given a little bit of recovery before the 3km to go mark. At that point, I wasn’t feeling too bad and I was contemplating trying to attack and try and put some time into Bron Ryan who was only 20sec ahead of me on GC. Stupidly, I didn’t do it. I think it was just because I was afraid I would blow and loose even more time which was stupid. Like they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained and as a result, I didn’t gain anything. Once we reached the summit and saw the 500m to go mark, I was starting to get edgy because Carlee Taylor was only 3sec behind me on GC and she was still looking strong. Luckily, Vicki was there to give me a hand and I was sitting on the front with her keeping up the pace and she was telling me “wait…wait..wait…” until we reached the 100m to go banner when she said “now” and I launched an attack. I ended up placing 3rd and gapping the chase group by 2sec. I was ecstatic with the result however disappoint that I didn’t give myself the opportunity to move up on GC and use my potential. I hate walking away from races thinking “what if” and annoyed that that was the case. But I can take away lots of positive things from the race, like the fact that I rode well leading up to the climb trying to conserve energy and that I pushed myself more than I thought possible to hang on on the climb!

In the end, I finished 5th on GC. I was very pleased with the result as it was my first major tour as an Elite Woman. Although the professional riders who were present were well below their usual form, it was still comforting to know that I was able to stay with them on the climbs and I look forward to seeing what I can do come Nationals at the beginning of next year! I took a lot away from the Tour and I will no doubt learn from the mistakes I made to improve my performance at my next race!

The top 5 on GC were as followed

Vicki Whitelaw
Shara Gillow
Lisa Jacobs
Bronwyn Ryan
Myfanwy Galloway

For the full results and final GC:
http://www3.your-sports.com/details/results.php?lang=en&page=6&eventid=1402&contest=7&name=Allg.%20Listen%7CGC%20RANKING%20with%20Stage%20Times&CertificateLink=1&format=view


Vicki Whitelaw and I at the top of Mt Hotham after the completion of Stage 3


The view of Hotham

Stage 2: the Individual Time Trial (ITT) 15.7km

Now, I’m not going to lie, I’m not the world’s biggest time trial fan! Maybe because I don’t do particularly well by myself in the wind and that I hardly ever get the chance to do them in training so the mere thought of having to do one scares me just a little…but at least this one was only relatively short at just over 15km. It was going to be a hard ride given that we had only just completed a RR several hours before, but everyone else was in the same boat! I don’t have a TT bike so it was just a case of putting some clip on bars on my bike and chucking on a skin suit and I was set. I was lucky that the break I was in put a fair chunk of time into the rest of the peloton so I had a slight advantage over them in the TT. I warmed up on the wind trainer listening to my ipod and going through the course in my head. It was a relatively flat course which didn’t necessarily suit me overly and more or less played right into the hands of the TTers such as Vicki and Bridie (who ended up finishing 1st and 2nd respectively ahead of Kathy Watt in 3rd) but I was going to give it a decent crack! I then headed over the start ramp and before I knew it I was off. We were off at 20sec intervals and I was chasing the morning’s 2nd place getter Shara Gillow. The problem I have with TTs is I find it hard to concentrate on one thing for an extended period of time and I think that ultimately cost me in my final result. Don’t get me wrong, I did go hard, very hard and my HR data will tell you that also, but your mental approach also plays a major role in TTs. Thinking back on it, I believe that next time I need to break the course down in sections and give myself specific goals to achieve and things to focus on in each particular section which will hopefully keep my mind busy and enable me to focus more on the job at hand. So although I was a little disappointed with the overall result, I placed 10th about 2min36 down, I was still sitting in 5th position on GC going into tomorrows stage: Mt Hotham Ascent.

for full results of the stage:

http://www3.your-sports.com/details/results.php?lang=en&page=6&eventid=1402&contest=7&name=Stage%202%7CStage2%20GC%20RESULT&CertificateLink=1&format=view

Tour of Bright: Stage 1: Gas Loop 79km

Here it is, finally, the Tour of Bright. I have been crossing off the days on my calendar waiting for this event to come around and finally it has! I travelled down yesterday on the bus with the majority of the crew who were at the ACTAS camp the week before. It was a long ride and it felt good to finally get out and stretch the legs on the bike. I have to admit, that I felt shocking and was very nervous about how my legs would feel come race day! I was sharing a cabin with Vicki, her husband Dave and Chloe at a local motel. After our ride, Susie, mechanic extraordinaire, tuned our bikes and gave them a clean so we were all set for the weekend of racing ahead of us!

The first stage was an early start, 8am, from Ovens to Bright. It included some climbs such as that over Towanga gap and for the boys Mt Beauty. I lined up along side riders such as Vicki, Bridie O’Donnell, Kathy Watt, Carlee Taylor in A Grade Women (after being originally put in B Grade which did wonders for my self confidence lol ). The first part of the race was pretty relaxed, it was like we were out for a Sunday stroll! And then as we hit the base of Towanga Gap (with just over 20km to go) Vicki hit the front and set the pace up the climb. Slowly but surely riders started dropping like flies until there was a group of about 6 of us including Vicki, Shara Gillow, Lisa Jacobs, Carlee Taylor, another fellow Canberran Bron Ryan and myself. We lost Bron at about 2km from the top of the climb and Carlee, Lisa and myself dropped the wheel when Shara attacked just under 1km to the top of the KOM with Vicki in tow. Vicki and Shara managed to hang on to their lead finishing 1st and 2nd respectively whilst I won the bunch kick form Carlee and Lisa to finish in 3rd spot just over 1min down. I was pretty stoked with the result as I would never have predicted anything like it! My main goal was to try and hang on to the girls for as long as I could on the climb but to cap it off with a podium finish in one of my first races as an Elite Woman felt pretty awesome to say the least! It was then just a matter of getting some food into me (nothing hits the spot like my banana bread oatmeal :P) and having a good cool down to prepare myself for the race of truth: the ITT.

for full results of the stage:
http://www3.your-sports.com/details/results.php?lang=en&page=6&eventid=1402&contest=7&name=Stage%201%7CStage1%20GC%20RESULTS&CertificateLink=1&format=view

ACTAS Road Camp: Day 5

Its been a long time coming, probably because I didn't want to have to remember the amount of pain I felt on this ride lol... but here's the write up from our last day on ACTAS camp!

Well it was another early departure for us, the boys left just before 8am and we were in the cars shortly after. Today the girls and a few others were riding from the now familiar Robertson Pie shop back to Goulburn whilst the boys tackled Macquarie Pass again and met up with us at the Pie shop. I don’t know about everyone else, but personally I was counting on this ride to being similar to the ride up to Kiama…Just a nice easy cruise along the highway! But little did we realise that we’d be treated to strong winds which turned into a nasty block headwind the moment we reached the highway. We were creeping, no joke. At some points we were probably going not much faster than walking pace! And it took us nearly over 1hr to do the last 20km of our ride…wow. Just thinking back on it I remembered just how horrible it was lol, the longest 95km of my life! But I was one of the lucky ones…I was fortunate enough to have a seat in the car with my name written all over it :D! I felt sorry for the guys who had another 80 or so ks to ride to get back to Canberra…apparently it was another very slow ride! But they all made it there albeit a little worse for wear! Once we had reached Goulburn we gorged ourselves on our much loved salad rolls which we had gown quite attached to over the last we days and we were changed, packed and ready to leave within a matter of minutes! I shot-gunned the front passenger’s seat because I rode in the middle of the back seat on the way up and my head was pressed against the window and I was fast asleep before we left the parking lot! I was pooped. But it was a good feeling, knowing that I had pushed my body that hard over the last few days! With any luck all my hard work will pay off for the Tour of Bright on the weekend!

All in all, I think that the camp was a fantastic experience and I definitely learnt a lot from being there! I pushed myself harder than thought possible and learnt new strategies to help improve my performance! And it all went down without a hitch thanks to the awesome work done by Glenn, Kris and Grant who took such good care of us throughout the entire camp!
Next on the agenda: Tour of Bright 6-7 Dec, wish me luck!

ACTAS Road Camp: Day 4

On today’s schedule was another 140km of undulating terrain with a hike up Macquarie Pass thrown in for good measure. I went down to meet everyone for our 9am start and do my pre ride weigh in when Glen came up to me with a genius plan. He offered to hook me up with a radio and every 10min was going to tell me to drink and tell me to eat at regular intervals during the ride. I had previously approached him about the difficulties I was having to remember to eat and drink on my rides and during racings which was ultimately affecting my performance, noticeably in the closing stages of the race. I thought it was a brilliant idea! And was surprised that no one had suggested I do something like it before! It was an epic task to take on on his behalf, as well as tedious, having to constantly remind me every few minutes, but I am eternally grateful and believe that it had a significant impact on my performance during the ride! I felt stronger on the climbs because I’d taken on adequate fuel and fluid before the major ones and found that I had more left in the tank in the closing stages of the ride! I think that it helped me a lot and I’m truly thankful to Glen (and Grant) for taking up the challenge!
Back to the day’s ride, it was again another undulating ride (remind me never to complain about doing cotter loops ever again!) with my favourite climb of the camp: Macquarie Pass. Macquarie Pass is about a 6km climb? I don’t know.. I’m just estimating.. it was long.. long enough for Viki to get in 2x10min SEs and another 6min one lol. It has a gradual increase in gradient, sort of like a Stromlo back home and it presented people with the opportunity to ‘tap’ up it or go all out and smash it to the top! I love it! Another significant part of the ride was the climb up Cardiac. Let me tell you, its not called Cardiac because it is easy. Far out. It was near the end of the ride and I was already feeling the affects of the last 3 days of camp…it hurt. It was only just under 1km but it was a very steep pinch. I was secretly praying for Glen to drive up in the car and offer me a tow up it but again, that would be giving up.. and that is not on.

Needless to say, I was glad when we finally got home! I went straight for the baked beans on toast and then it was just a case of relaxing in the ice bath (I’m actually a bit of a fan to be honest!) and soaking up some sun in a last ditched effort to get rid of the tan lines before formal on Thursday! Our room decided to celebrate our last night at camp by ordering Mexican..yummy! I got a chicken Chimichanga (don’t even know how to begin pronouncing it) and it was sooo tastey! Hmm..and so huge! But I ate every last bit of it :) After letting my stomach digest what it had just taken in, Chloe and I again treated ourselves to ice cream from the ice creamery again.. just because we could :) and then we called it a night because we had to get up early to start our trek back home!



Well at least my tan lines aren't THAT bad :P

ACTAS Road Camp: Day 3

Today: rest day: thank god. I was pretty shattered after my ride yesterday and woke up to the sound of rain, thankful that it was a rest day and I wouldn’t have to venture out in the more than unfriendly weather conditions which presented itself to us. On our schedule was a much awaited for coffee shop ride, but we definitely had to work for it! It was probably one of the hardest rec rides I think I’ve ever had to do! Being situated in a little valley, the only way to get out of Kiama was up and so our 35km ride proved to be challenging in some parts (well for me at least). But the berry frappe I had soon made me forget the pain in my legs and the cute clothes shops were really nice, and had fabulous cheap clothes! Probably best I was in my riding stuff…otherwise I would have bought half the shop! I didn’t do much for the rest of the day, which was really nice! It is great now that I’ve finished school and the feeling that ‘I should be dong something, not relaxing’ is finally gone.. well for now at least! And I was enjoying sitting on the veranda reading trashy magazines without a care in the world! We watched and laughed the video of ourselves struggling up the climbs and had a lovely bbq put on by Glen and the rest of the crew which was delicious (when it was finally ready :P…to their credit, the bbq was really dodgy and they ended up cooking the meat in the oven…). We are really spoilt!
So another day has been ticked off the calendar, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s ride where we are going to climb Macquarie Pass!

ACTAS Road Camp: Day 2

Day 2 promised to be the hardest day of the camp…and it certainly didn’t disappoint! The full schedule was around 150km of undulating terrain with 4 significant climbs: Jamberoo, Mt Berry and twice up Saddle back (up 1 way then up the other side, because just going up there once wasn’t painful enough!). Unfortunately I missed out on climbing Jamberoo as Chloe and I were put on a shortened schedule today but from the looks on the rest of the crews’ faces, it looked like it was one hell of a climb! Except for maybe Bling who smashed it all the way to the top and he was even able to give us a smile as he rode past the video camera to the top! Thinking back on it, it is probably best that I didn’t climb it, considering the massive box I found myself in for the rest of the ride…but I’d still rather ride up it than descend it any day :. Chloe and I got out at the top of the climb at the Pie Shop at Robertson and rode about 40km before coming face to face with our first climb of the day: Mt Berry. The climb itself wasn’t too bad and I found the gradient and the length of the climb to suit me quite well, in saying that though, it wasn’t easy! All up the climb was around 6km? and I was cruising up with Vicki, Bron and Fabio (who we started counter attacking in the final stages of the climb, lol ‘apparently’). Unfortunately with every uphill comes a downhill and so we were again faced with another dodgy descent albeit not as bad as Jamberoo. After conquering Mt Berry, we stopped in Berry to fuel up and regroup: Berg 1 complete. Only a few more to go…The thing about this ride was at no particular stage was the ride ‘flat’. It was constantly undulating which meant that there was no real chance for me to recover and I was having a hard time just trying to sit in!
We looped back nto Kiama where we would face the much talked about climb = Saddleback. We started climbing and Glen and John (Potholes) rolled up next to me in the car and asked ‘Do you want to do this climb? Because you don’t have to if you don’t want to’. For one split second I though that I should stop. Go home. I was buggered. But then I’d already started climbing and the thought of NOT doing the climb didn’t even come to mind before they asked me. I shook my head. If I can do this, I can do anything. And besides, I love a good challenge! My goal on the climb wasn’t to try and keep up with everyone, it was just a simple case of focusing on my technique and just trying to make it to the top. It was one bitch of a climb, 3-4km with gradients of 23% in some parts. I swear I nearly came to a standstill. But I made it to the top and I was pleased that I had achieved my goal!

View from the top of Saddleback (photo from google)... just to give you a little bit of an idea of how steep it was :)
Another interesting aspect of this camp is that Grant (the sports scientist) was filming some of our climbing and was able to provide us with feedback about our technique. This proved very beneficial as we learned ways to preserve our strength and it also proved to be entertaining as we watched everyone scramble and grind their way up the climb. There was definitely no style points awarded today! Once we had reached the top, we were given the opportunity to ride up the reverse side of the climb which was apparently shorter, although steeper than what I’d just done. Oh god. Or ride home. I was given my marching orders and finished the ride with about 100km.
After that, got home, had a much anticipated shower and pretty much fell into a heap. People can tell you that I looked pretty average… even after I had a nap! Lol, but hey, was broken…but you have to break yourself in order to rebuild yourself to be better and stronger than before! Before heading to bed though, we watched the decisively messed up and average Clock Work Orange and I ventured down to the local ice creamery I spotted when I was rounding up my Ks..and indulged in a scoop of ‘stairway to heaven’ ice cream. It was a reward to myself for pushing myself that little bit further, to expand my mental boundaries. Today, I surprised myself with my determination and dedication…and I think that warrants ice cream :P


Pie from the Pie shop (google images)

The Robertson Pie Shop (google images)

ACTAS Road Camp: Day 1

500km, 5 days, 3 significant climbs and the discovery of a whole new meaning of the world pain and that is in summary what the ACTAS Camp was all about :P. The ACTAS road camp is run annually and this year it's main focus was predominantly to put us all through a hard block of training leading up to the Tour of Bright next weekend as well as give us juniors the opportunity to ride different and challenging terrain and to expose us to new tools which we can utilise to further pursue our careers as cyclists. There were 20 people in total n the camp and we were fortunate enough to have ACTAS head coach Glen Doney, Kris Dunn a sports psychologist and Grant Van Der Ploeg a sports scientist helping us on the trip and providing us with invaluable advice and useful feedback which we can utilise to improve our performance.

The camp started on Thursday and on the schedule for myself, the other women and the U/19s was a 130km ride from Goulburn to Kiama which we would call home for the next few days. The rest of the group started from Canberra and met us in Goulburn after a quick brew stop! It ended up being a massive day for them with close to 250km! The terrain was undulating for the most part of the ride and the weather was treating us well which overall made for a very pleasant ride! One thing to take note of would have to be the decent down Jamberoo. OH MY GOD. I don’t think I have ever been so scared of a decent in my entire life! It was pretty sketchy, full of switchbacks and narrow winding roads which added to the excitement when it came to facing on coming cars! On the first corner, some of the riders locked up their breaks and it was from that moment I decided that I would be taking it easy.. there was no point going flat out and crashing on the first day! But yeah, definitely one for the records…

I’m not going to lie, we didn’t reach the accommodation a moment too soon! The accommodation was really nice! It is located on the main street and was right next to the supermarket (which is always convenient for hungry cyclists) and cute water front cafes were only a couple of minutes walk away! I had the pleasure of rooming with Chloe, Vicki Whitelaw and Bron and Joel Ryan and was privileged enough to share a bedroom with Vicki who was more than happy to share her experiences as a professional rider and give me some useful advice! It was really nice getting to know what life is like at the top of the pro scene and learning just what it takes to get there…plenty of guts and determination just to name a few! After we unloaded all of our gear and did our post ride weigh-in, it was just a matter of feeling the wrath of the ice bath and filling up at a local Thai restaurant before heading back to the apartments and calling it a night!

So that is day 1 complete, day 2 is meant to be the hardest day of the camp…Bring on the hills!