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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 24, 2004: Geelong Women's Tour, final stage
Lara road race, 115km
The start of today's stage was about an hour's drive away from our villas. We had a 4-car convoy with the Brits, the truck carrying all our bikes, our van, and our soigneur's car carrying Dede and Stacey. Our soigneur Heather is one of the sweetest people to walk the planet. She loves taking care of us and does it well; she's just not the fastest driver. I was in the van with our director, Michael Engleman, and he basically rode Heather's bumper TRYING to get her to keep up with the rest of the caravan. Finally we started texting Dede and asking her to tell Heather to step on it. But despite our texts and Michael's driving skills, Heather was determined to get there on her own time. Which still got us there with time to spare; it was certainly different than the death-grip drives we'd been on with Jean-Paul Van Poppel, our part-time director last year!
I have to give our director, Michael Engleman, huge credit for even coming on this trip. In January, Michael had a serious run-in with a snow blower on his ranch outside Durango, Colorado. He almost lost his entire hand. Surgery was performed on his hand but not to the extent that it should have been, and Michael's still been having a lot of pain and swelling. Michael hides the pain well, but we know he's suffering. He puts on a tough face though and doesn't let it affect his work here at all. He's scheduled to get another surgery done in the States when we return, and hopefully his hand will fully start to heal after that.
Once we arrived at the race site and got suited up, Dede and went on a little warm up ride with Cathy Marsal, the great French rider. Cathy and I were teammates 2 years ago and frequently keep in touch. Cathy has been racing since before I even thought about riding a bike. And she's younger than me! Cathy is riding for the Italian team Nobili-Fanini in Australia and will ride for Nobili in Europe the rest of the season. If you ever have any questions about any course on the women's circuit, just ask Cathy. She's raced just about everything there is at least 10 times. It can come in handy quite frequently!
The race started at 10:30 and the peloton was rolling. All the girls knew the toughest part of the race came at about the midway point with a very steep climb. And although it was only 2km, it had really split the field last year. The first 30km, the field just rolled along, girls chatting in the back. Finally some attacks started going and the race heated up a little bit. Eventually a group of 5 or 6 got off the front with Tina Pic (Jayco), Madelaine Lindberg (Nurnberger), Joanne Kiesanowski of New Zealand, and a few others that I'm not sure of. T-Mobile had missed the break but we weren't too worried since there was a long way to go in the race and a steep climb to contend with. After a few minutes, AIS went to the front and started setting tempo, as they weren't happy with the combination that was up the road. They were the ones with the yellow jersey to protect.
We came into the climb at the 57km mark and holy cow... my cadence dropped dramatically. As we climbed, we passed a few of the girls that had been in the break. Amber made it to the top with the front group of 5 or 6. I crested with Dede, Miriam Melchers, and Sara Carrigan just behind the front group. We told Amber to wait and worked our way up to the group. Other small groups caught on as well and girls used the hesitations in the bunch to try and attack. But nothing was going. The main field really regrouped after that and it looked like the final 50km back to Lara were going to be like the first 50km. We started attacking, trying to get one of us away in a group, but girls were on it too fast. And I realized, not that it surprised me in the least, that I have absolutely no kind of jump right now. It's more of just a slow acceleration. I hope I can improve on that in 3 days in time for the World Cup!
My teammate, Stacey Peters, was having an awesome day. She was always covering attacks at the front and just seemed to be everywhere she was needed all day. So I was really excited for her when she got in a break of three about 12km from the finish. She deserved that so much! It was a good break too with Emma James (SATS), and Trixi Worrack (Nurnberger). The field seemed content to let them go and we really hoped the break would hold to the line. Unfortunately for Stacey, who was just trying to follow the rules of the road, the break came to a roundabout and instead of taking the short cut like the other 2, she went the long way around. It was just enough to lose her two breakmates. But the two were caught by the field with 500m to go and it was a full-on field sprint. Sara Ulmer of New Zealand took the win over Nicole Freedman, World Team, and Petra Rossner. All in all, it was a solid tour for us. We were able to gauge where our fitness is in comparison to the rest of the field, and we shook out the cobwebs for our upcoming races. We now have 3 days rest before the first women's World Cup of the season. Time for some massage and spa experiences.
See you soon.
Kimberly
