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The Kimberly Bruckner Journal 2004
Like many top riders, 2001 US road champion Kimberly Bruckner has the Athens Olympics in her sights as she returns to racing after surgery for a soft-tissue tumour in her ankle cut short her 2003 season. With her T-Mobile squad in its second year, her diary this year will document the highs and lows of the US' top women's team.
Final day fatigue & lucky bird poop
Tour de L'Aude Feminin, France, May 14-23, 2004
Stage 10 - May 23: Limoux to Limoux, 111km
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Oh the fatigue and weariness has definitely set in. This morning I woke up ready to race, but I think the morning dragged on too long into the afternoon and my motivation quickly wained. Especially when our director told us "parade" today. Although parade never actually means parade. It means we're going to go like hell for 111km and see how it sorts itself out in the end. I just hope I can hang on.
We fly home early tomorrow morning and so were planning on skipping the big party tonight. We found out that was a big no-no. You do not miss Madame's party if you ever want to be invited back to this Tour. Nor do you skip it if you plan on ever seeing the prize money. So plans have changed slightly and we won't leave for Toulouse now until we've put in our appropriate time at the soiree.
Today's stage didn't start until 2pm today which is really hard on mind and body. Let's get this show on the road! Lucky for us, the start/finish is less than 1km from our hotel. That is some great planning as I can just roll right out of bed and find my way to the start line.
It wasn't a walk in the park profile for today either. Just in case girls didn't get in enough climbing yesterday, we had two cat 2 and one cat 1 climbs to get over. Throw in three more sprint bonuses and you've got yourself one heck of a final stage. Fortunately, when we arrived at the start they told us they had cancelled the third climb. Beautiful.
Then while we were warming up, Kim got shat on by a bird. It was dripping off her helmet and had splattered on her jersey and shorts. We could not stop laughing. And everyone we told it to kept saying that it meant good luck.
The race itself was no parade. Attacks started immediately and Nurnberger actually let a break of three go pretty early. In the break were Angela Brodtka (German National team), Nicole Demars (Canada), and Loes Gunnewijk (Netherlands). Nurnberger kept time at the front and all seemed calm. The Cat 1 climb shook things up a bit when Susanne Ljungskog attacked with just 1km to go to the mountain sprint. Ouch. I think I was going cross-eyed the final 250 meters. I just needed to hang on until the descent. It all came back together though on the long descent back into town.
The final 20km SATS went to the front and tried to bring the break back, setting it up for their sprinter Anita Valen. They were 26 seconds away from the break by the finish. And Anita was a little too aggressive in the field sprint and was relegated to last in the bunch. Brodtka won the final stage with Demars finishing second and Gina Grain won the field sprint. Maybe Kim's bird poop incident was good luck. Because after all was said and done, we finished the number one team, third on the podium, and all with one less girl than most.
Now we're at the dinner as I write this on my Blackberry and it doesn't look like its going to be over any time soon. The first course was pressed pig head. I had to run over to Cathy Marsal's table to ask her what it was. At least the wine is plentiful! And I think we'll just stop at McDonalds on the way out of town tonight.
