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.

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Giro d'Italia Femminile, part seven: Super fun

Stage 6 - July 10: Jesi (AN) - Jesi (AN), 89 km

Today's stage started and finished in the town of Jesi. We raced a hilly 30km circuit three times and like every stage so far, we finished in the fastest predicted time. After looking at the profile, I thought for sure the race would break up today, but it still did not. Lots of teams were active and T-Mobile was right up there leading the charge trying to get a break off. Actually, it was a super fun circuit to race, with constant up and downs. It was one of those races where after you finish, you feel like you just gained a lot of fitness out of it. My heart rate was going from tempo to VO2 to LT to VO2. I certainly hope some good comes out of all this!

The closest we got to a break that stuck was a group of five that included my teammate Dotsie Cowden. They broke off the main group near the end of the second lap and stayed off, hanging at about 15-20 seconds the whole time, until a few kilometers from the finish. It was groupo compacto as we came into the final 5km of the race and it looked like it was going to be another field sprint. But with just over one kilometer to go, Mari sensed a hesitation in the pack and attacked off the front. She gained time right away since at first there was still hesitation after she attacked. But soon, the charge was on and with a slight uphill finish, the field caught Mari with just about 400 meters to go. Regina Schleicher got a great leadout from her teammate Zinaida again, and they finished 1-2. It was Olivia Gollan from the Australian National team finishing third to round out the podium. And still no change to overall general classification. I thought today would be the day that things might get shaken up a bit, but it looks like they might have to send us back to the mountains in order to do that.

Upon arriving at our new hotel, we found an odd thing: the toilet is directly underneath the shower in a little stall. It's very weird. It certainly makes it easy to shave your legs, as we can just put up a leg on the toilet seat. But now our toilet paper is a bit wet. I don't know who planned this layout... very interesting.

Tomorrow is a double day: first stage at 9:30am, 100 kilometer transfer, and then another stage starting at 3:15pm. So we better rest up.

Cheers!
Kim

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