After getting back to Canbera relatively late on Thursday night, needless to say that I was not looking forward to a 5am start on Friday morning, but you have to do what you have to do and considering I was due to leave for Sydney with Chloe and her family at 9, I didn't really have much choce as my legs were begging for a recovery ride. It didn't prove to be too painful and riding with the bunch was far more appealing than rding by myself.
So after my ride, I went home and got my things, wandered over to Chloe's and set off to Sydney firstly by passing the polling booths to cast our first ever votes (even though I hate to admit it, I would be lying if I said I played close attention to all of the candidates policies and knew exactly what they were on about rather than voting for however sounded cool and i'd seen on TV.. but hey, got to start somewhere and I promise my fellow Canberran's that I will make a more informed decision in the years to come. I did however get some guidance from Chloe who told me not to vote for certain parties because they were like weird cults...)
We spent most of the say walkng around Darling Harbour to do a spot of shopping (yeah I know, gerat recovery..but I was on a quest to find a formal dress! Sadly to no avail..:( ) Anyway, had a yummy pasta meal and attempted to reduce the damage to my legs caused by a day of shopping with a hot/cold shower, streches and some major Skin time.
I woke up the next day feeling a bit ordinary but didn't let that get to me, you know what some say - You race your best when your feeling horrible? well I was hoping they were right...It was disgustingly hot, over 30 degrees.. at least it didn't take long for us to warm up! The race was held at Sydney Olympic Park and was on an L shaped hot dog circuit which after the first 10min, started to take it's toll on my legs! It was a relatively small field of girls who started but the quality of the riders were definitely not lacking! Fronting up were riders such as Ashlee Ankudinoff, Theresea Gallagher just to name a few. The race was about 35min? and the pressure was on right from the gun. There were numerous attacks being launched, by myself included (god knows why I did that too myself lol, but I do like a challenge) to try and get the sting out of some of the sprinter's legs and slowly the race started to disintergrate. I was starting to struggle but ws still in contact with the 5 other riders who were left when someone ran into my rear wheel, causing a pile up witht eh other 3 riders. Fortunately, no one was badly injured and all took the liberty of hte 1 lap out an re-joined the field. I completed 1 more lap and noticed that my bike didn't feel stable going around the hot dog corners and it felt as though my Zipp rear wheel had taken a bit of a bashing and the last thing I wanted was the race to come down to a sprint finish and my tyre roll off or i cause someone to crash screaming around the last bend so i thought i'd take a visit to the pits and pick up my spare wheel. I stoppped at the pits and they started to fix my wheel when they told me that I had 4 laps remaining so wasn't allowed to pick up my spares (we didn't have a lap board and i looked at the time on my computer and thought it was still OK).. so unfortunately i had to chase back on to the bunch and try and finish the race. I didn't end up making contact with the bunch again, but I did finish, think I picked up about 6th or 7th. Ashlee won in the bunch sprint and completly inihilated the field, it was great to watch, Congrats to her!
So a disappointing race for me, but hey, there is not much I could do...except ride on my dodgy wheel? but I guess we all make mistakes and unfortunatley sometimes learn from them the hard way...
Until next time
take care
xo
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