No power in Spain

After an afternoon and evening of travel we made it to our hotel in Vallodolid, a city 200km or so from Madrid in Spain, about 9:30pm. Unfortunately my bag containing pretty much everything had failed to arrive with my team bus, a mix up with communication means that it will be arriving in France just before Tour de l’Aude….so I came with the clothes on my back and luckily enough a spare pair of bike shoes in my carry on luggage. So after some kind donations from my team mates of everything else required to race….knicks, jersey, undershirt, bra top, socks, gloves, glasses….I had everything sorted for a day at least. We had dinner and I had a bit of catch up time with Liv….always good to see her, talk some good Aussie shit and share thoughts and stories of what has been going on.
10:30am start for the World Cup race today was a bit earlier than we were all used to….but after a lovely nights sleep I dragged myself out of bed, got kitted up and we rode to the race start, only 5km away. On the agenda was 123.3km, out and back with a big lap and then into the finish for 6 laps of a very tough, very up and down 6km circuit. We had a bit of a general race plan, a few of us have been sick, and we needed to see how the legs were out there. Unfortunately for me and my body I spent most of Friday in bed or on the toilet after an apparently bad run in with some smoked salmon that decided it didn’t agree with me….so for me, my tummy was a little queasy and I was a little weak…but trying to remain positive and glad to be racing in the sunshine. We set off, a field of 145 girls or so….it was quite aggressive from the start, but on wide fast roads everything was shut down. I chased quite a lot, attacked a few times and tried to remain vigilant in the front however I knew I was in trouble after about 50km when I quite suddenly had greatly diminished power in my legs…bugger! So another 20km later it was see-ya later to the bunch….and a roll into town for Natty. Another quite forgettable day I hope in the racing calendar. After the last few days I couldn’t be disappointed, I just hope to eat a whole lot and regain strength in the next days leading into Tour de l’Aude. On the team front we had a really good race. Our climber extraordinaire Theresa Senff powerfully climbed herself into 4th place behind Nicole Cooke, Judith Arndt and Suzanne Llungkog….an impressive result, so close to a podium finish that she deserves. The other girls all had good aggressive rides and I’m feeling really positive going into our next 10 days of racing that we have a team that can tackle the race head on. So…tonight we are in Spain, tomorrow we drive the 800km to France and then have a few days of relaxed training rides, and hopefully some sun-baking. Shame I don’t have my bikini…..its in my bag 