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Time for a change: The Kimberly Bruckner Journal 2003
Last year the 2001 US Road Champion Kimberly Bruckner left the number one ranked women's team in the US after two years with Saturn and joined the growing force that is Team T-Mobile. With her sights firmly set on the Worlds in Hamilton and the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004, Kimberly's diary is sure to provide compelling reading.
Geelong Women's Tour - 2.9.2, Australia, February 23-25, 2003
Stage 1 - February 23: Eastern Beach Criterium, 30km
Summertime Down Under
Hi everyone,
Team T-Mobile has been in Australia for just over a week now... and we're loving it! But who wouldn't love summer time when we've come from snow, cold, and rain?
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Our team here consists of Mari Holden, 2000 Olympic Silver medalist and World Champion, Kristin Armstrong, our latest conversion from pro tri-geek to pro cyclist, Stacey Peters, Kim Anderson, and me. Last weekend was rather trial by fire, as we had all flown 14 hours from LA to Sydney to Canberra and then drove (on the wrong side of the road!) to Cooma for a 2-day race that started the very next morning. That was a huge shock to our systems!
It was so hot that day - in the 90's - and the sun was absolutely beating down. And having been warned that there is no ozone layer over Australia, we needed to take extra precaution in applying loads of sunscreen. My plan of wearing arm warmers in order to avoid the jersey-tan kind of went out the window. I would have looked like an idiot. Anyway, it was a good weekend to get our legs under us and see what kind of competition we were up against.
The Aussies are always going strong at this time of the season. Their nationals are in January, unlike ours in June and many of them have been racing since December. Cooma is this tiny little town seemingly in the middle of nowhere, but some of the country's biggest cycling fans live there and worked hard to put on this year's Cooma Classic in place of the Tour de Snowy.
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As our little bus was taking the team and all our luggage back to the Canberra airport early Monday morning, we got a flat tire and had to pull over. T-Mobile should have shot a commercial at that point - all of us girls in the middle of the outback, looking for kangaroos in the early morning fog, all talking on our T-Mobile phones while the guys fixed the bus!
Moving on, we've spent the week in the little town of Queenscliff, around the bay about 100km from Melbourne. The training rides have been awesome as the Great Ocean Road, which hugs the coast, is very close to where we're staying and we've ridden it just about every day.
And now today, the 3-day Geelong Tour began with an evening criterium in the park. The field gathered here is strong with 14 teams from around the world. Besides several Australian teams, Japan National, and New Zealand National, there's 5 European teams and our American squad.
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The first women's World Cup is being contested next weekend in Geelong and we're all here to prepare for that. I was particularly excited that Nurnberger was here because two of my teammates from last year are on that squad: Judith Arndt and Petra Rossner. Dave Millward, the husband of Anna Millward, another of my ex-teammates, is working with the German squad here as well, so seeing them all was like a family reunion! Plus, Judith and Petra surprised me with some of my absolute favourite candy from Germany, so it was all good. It was so fun to see them again.
But back to the race - it was fast and furious from the gun and I would have loved to get my SRM download from the race, but my battery died only 3 minutes into it. It's probably better not to see my heart rate at that state anyway! About 15 minutes into the 60 minute crit, Olivia Gollan broke away and stayed solo for the rest of the race. Olivia's the newly crowned Australian road champion and now was proving she should be the crit champion as well.
Despite all the attacks going on behind her, nothing else was allowed to break away and by the end, Olivia had just about a minute on the field. Kim Anderson had a great finish for us, sprinting to a strong 6th place. But the podium was fully Australian with Sara Carrigan (Power-Plate-Bik) and Alison Wright (Itera) finishing 2nd and 3rd. I'm sure that pleased the Aussie fans.
Thanks for reading,
KB
