Photo: © Casey Gibson

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.

• Index to all entries

Giro d'Italia Femminile, part six: Blazing!

Stage 5 - July 9: Lanciano-Alba Adriatica, 104 km

When we arrived at the start this morning, we learned that the vampires (i.e. UCI doping officials) had been out in full force last night. They did blood tests on almost every team I believe. Some teams were woken up much earlier than others. Apparently though, we weren't staying at the same hotel that the UCI officials had on their list, so they couldn't find us. I'm sure we'll get tested tonight. I'm just hoping they come at 7 or 8am instead of 2am. I really don't feel like having my blood taken at two in the morning, but I may not have much of a choice!

I'm rather happy we weren't waken from our sleep last night though because we were in a great hotel with air conditioning that worked full-on and we were all sleeping well.

Today's stage was blazing fast - and I mean blazing. As we passed the 50km mark in our 104km stage, our director radioed to us that our average for that part of the race had been 44km/ hour. I think the next 54km were even faster. The course was relatively flat and headed north up the Adriatic coast to the coastal town of Alba Adriatica. And we arrived there before we knew it! From the gun, it was a short descent from Lanciano back down to the coast and then the attacks started. A break never got off today, but it wasn't for lack of us trying. We really tried! We had a full team effort going as did many others, but it's hard to get much of a gap off the peloton when it's cruising along at 50km/ hour. I don't think a single girl got dropped today, because even though it was fast, it was pretty easy to just sit in the draft and be pulled along if you weren't interested in attacking. My legs felt rather spry today and I attacked as much as I could along with my teammates, would sit in the draft and rest for a bit, and then try again. It just wasn't working.

The finish consisted of two 3km circuits through the town. The Australian national team was trying their best to give their sprinter a great lead-out, but it was Zinaida Stahurskaia who pulled her teammate, Regina Schleicher, to the line first for the win. T-Mobile girls all finished safely in the bunch and there were no changes in the overall classification.

When we found our team van near the finish, we found Gary, our British soigneur, had parked right next to this awesome beach. Dotsie, Kim, Stacey, Amber, and I all walked through the sand down to the water and waded in. Actually, Dotsie wasn't shy at all and jumped right into the waves and swam. The water felt SO good; the temperature was perfect. I could have easily stayed there the rest of the afternoon. But we had a longer transfer (longer for this race anyway) further north along the coast to the town of Falconara and had to eventually get going. Luckily, Kristin and I snagged seats in our Team Telekom Audi (borrowed from the men's Telekom team for the Giro). The Audi has a TV and we were able to watch the men's team time trial in the Tour during our transfer. I still can't believe Tyler Hamilton is riding despite his broken collarbone. That is one determined man.

Until tomorrow then!
Kim

Results

Cheers!
Kim