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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.
February 23, 2004: Geelong women's tour, stage 1
Racing at last - but look out for the bugs
The T-Mobile posse arrived in Australia last Tuesday, which has been nice because it's allowed us to get our feet under us after such a drastic time change. The flight over was business as usual except for the scare Kristin gave us a few hours before touching down in Sydney. All of a sudden she got really sick and nauseous. Stacey feared it was because of the Ambien she had given her to help her sleep on the 15 hour flight overseas. I figured it was the yummy food we had been served on the plane. During our short layover in Sydney however, Kristin managed to toss it all up and after that she was ready to go. Thank goodness!
I LOVE coming to Australia. It's always so beautiful here. And after a winter spent in Colorado with a mix of sun, heavy winds, and sometimes heavier snow, it's nice to be in a land of constant warm temperatures. I think one of the most beautiful rides of all time is riding down the Great Ocean Road just south of Geelong, near where we're staying. On Friday, we did a ride down this road to Apollo Bay, about 120 kilometers away from where we're staying. The road hugs the coastline the whole way, passing fantastic beaches and cute coastal towns. With all of us staring out towards the ocean, taken with the views and the surfers, I'm surprised we didn't get ourselves killed. But overall, traffic was pretty understanding of us tourists.
The four-day Geelong Tour started with an 8km prologue in the seaside town of Port Arlington. Although it was considered a time trial, no time trial equipment could be used. I heard this was to save all the international teams from having to lug over their TT bikes as well as road bikes. Which was kind of them... but it didn't help me out much! We didn't even have skin suits yet so we were going really retro.
On my warm up ride to the start of the TT, I pulled over to pee and made a big mistake of going in some very tall grass. When I looked down, I saw these big ants on the ground, so I yanked up my shorts. But once I had my shorts pulled up, I felt something bite me very hard on the hip. I pulled my shorts back down enough to find a huge spider stuck to my leg. I rapidly flicked him out and got back on my bike. But now the stories of all the poisonous creatures that inhabited this continent came flooding to my mind. As the bite on my hip was throbbing, I was thinking, "Great...now the venom will easily course through my veins since I'm riding. I'm going to fall over and no one will find me." I'm kind of a hypochondriac that way. But no worries. I made it to the start of the TT course just fine.
Dede Barry came out on top for our team today finishing in a strong 10th place. Kristin Armstrong was just behind her in 11th. This is great considering the Aussies have been racing for over 2 months now...and we're just shaking the cobwebs off. I haven't raced since the US Crit nationals in Downer's Grove in mid-August! So it feels great to shake everything up and finally start racing again. I think Aussies took the top five spots if not the top nine. We're going to have our work cut out for us in the crit tonight.
Until then!
Kimberly
