Marina Duvnjak

Geelong tour = 2 days, 3 stages! 180km total

Day 1 stage 1= 8 km time trial, standard bike. Out and back course, it was pretty windy this morning. Head wind out and tail/side wind back1 nothing major to report. Finished mid field

Day1 stage 2= 75km Road race, 3 laps of a pretty darn flat circuit. The wind was a major factor today! The plan was to help Serena move up to 3^rd in the U23 grade and give it a go for a stage win! Plan 1 achieved as Serena picked up 3 seconds through one of the sprints, and we tried to set up for a stage finish, but didn’t quite have the legs to finish it off. The last 8km was a massive tail wind and while the lead-out trains were going 60km/hr it was pretty hard to do anything major, and I finished in the bunch!

Day 2 last stage= 95km 6 laps of a 15km circuit. Again a pretty windy day, no major climbs. The last 5 km or so were up hill but with a massive tail wind we were still going over 55km/hr … Personally I felt like complete crap! My job was to start being aggressive after the 4^th lap, and I did give it a crack a couple of times but nothing that stuck! On the last lap I was starting to lose focus a bit and found myself stuck a little further back then I should have been, about 8km to go and of course it was strung out and there was a crash which I managed to be behind… anyway I finished just behind the bunch safe and in one piece!!

The team did ok considering not having radios this year which made communication a little harder, and thank god we all finished in one piece!! Last year we had a slight disaster where I think every member of the team crashed at least once if not twice in this tour!!

Saturday we had a day away from racing, which included a 1.5hr recovery ride going over the course for the Sunday World Cup. Then we had a chance to look around a couple of shops in town and I’m quite proud to say I only spent $20 …. Not bad for a girl!!

Sunday! World Cup day!! 115km 8 laps

Well the team goal was to get at least 2 of us in the top 20, as the UCI points go to 20^th spot. We were to look after ourselves till the last couple of laps, as that’s when the hammer goes down and it really counts! This year started off a little quicker then in the past, right on the first lap there were attacks and the pace was pretty high!! On the 2^nd lap there was a split in the bunch and a group of 9 or so got away, pretty much every team was represented, and I was in there too! There were only about 7 6 of us that were working, no radio on me, so I had no idea what the time gap was (apparently we got to around 2 min) or what was happening in the main peleton! I knew that Team High Road rider(ex T-mobile) was sitting on us and that probably meant that sooner or later they were going to shut it down, and they did after about 2.5laps, once we got caught by the main bunch about 20 sec later I got a flat, so a quick change and off I went, then had to stop again as the spokes were about to rip out my sensor, once that was all sorted I got back in the pack!!

Think the next couple of laps I was just trying to recover and maybe cover a few moves, but what I didn’t realise that there were 2 riders up the road clocking up some serious time on the peleton! Apparently at one point had almost 7 min on the us! Oops…. Anyway long story shot-ish….. Again everyone waited for Team High Road to chase it all down, and they did, they brought it back to 2 min or so, in 2 laps….. But not quite enough… I blew on the last climb and was out of the pic for the sprint. The team did pretty well, 17^th and 23^rd were our top 2.

Righto, that’s all for now, will write more when I get to Wellington (doing a 5 day tour starting on Wednesday…eeeeeeekkkk)) !! Hope the internet there‘s cheaper then $24 for a day!!! What a rip!!!

Have fun and will try write in next day or two!

See you

Marina J