Team Cyclingnews.com - Down Under - 2004

June 10, 2004

At the halfway mark... already!

By Phil Thuaux

G'day again,

Another few weeks have passed, and all of a sudden I'm at the halfway point through my European season - already!

The last few weeks has seen a variety of racing, ranging from our local amateur kermesse (Eric won, and three more in the top ten), all the way to me attacking groups including Jan Ullrich and Erik Zabel in Germany in a great 1.3 ranked race! The travelling between distant countries eased up for a while, allowing me to get some more reasonable rest, rather than the average 10 hour car trips each side of a weekend which went on for five weeks running.

Making the most of being back in Belg for a few weekends, I was able to catch up with some familiar faces from the Central Coast. The world duathlon championships were held just 30km from here, and I was able to go and see some Aussies giving it their best shot! For those of you who don't know, Margaret Beardslee from the Central Coast won her age division, and will now be able to defend her world title in Newcastle, Australia, next September! Gav Scott's also hanging around Belg for a few months, and we've been able to have a few training rides together.

We head to Spain early on Monday morning, to start a seven-day tour in the Pyrennes on Wednesday. My form's been developing well with some results, including a third place in a stage of a three-day tour a few weeks ago, as well as narrowly missing a podium result in a one day race in Belgium, after being away for the last 10 kilometres of the race, only to be caught by the bunch with only 150m to go to the finish line.

The other news is that we recently had a documentary team follow us around EVERYWHERE for three days as they collected footage for a documentary they're producing on us. It'll all be available online, at www.cycling.tv. The film will be completed in several weeks, and can be seen online. With a dial-up connection you'll only see five frames/sec (television works at 22 frames/sec), but for any of you with broadband, you'll get a smooth, TV-like image. I'll let you know when it's all completed.

Still on the Internet topic, Pip Taylor, an Aussie pro triathlete, has launched her own website, www.piptaylor.com. Harro, Robbie and myself have done lots of training with Pip, and coach Justin up at Lennox Head over each summer for the last few years. There's also a link there to our own team page, www.team.cyclingnews.com for those of you who have lost it, or haven't checked out our diary entries and latest pics!

Apart from training towards Spain and some other tours coming up, I've been flat out trying to get through the uni work by the end of the semester. With the season going so fast, I'm also running out of time for studying just as quickly! Nothing like a balanced lifestyle hey!

The way the season's progressing, I'll keep riding through after Spain and the other tours I have until early August, when I'll have a small break. After those few days it'll be back to it, and racing right through until the end of the season. So, keep the second week of August free for a bit of an adventure through Europe if anyone's up for it!

Will keep in touch, look after yourselves,
Phil