World Cup - Time Trial

Today was one of those days that I have dreamt about, but today my dreams came true. It was the Time Trial today and 2 of the top Trike male riders were in attendance. It was important for me to race well against them even though here they are awarding categories separately. Come September in London I will be racing the men for one set of medals and although the race will be factored (handicapped) I still wanted to be as close to them in raw time as possible.

Today we saw the temperature reach 37 degrees! Not great for someone with MS who is heat intolerant, but luckily I didn't start until 7:13 pm so the temperature had dropped to a comfortable 26 degrees. The wind however did not go away, but shifted slightly! We rode into an amazing headwind with a bit of crosswind thrown in for good measure, but on the way home had an amazing tailwind!

I was the 2nd female to leave, one minute behind the French girl and a minute ahead of Marie Eve! the Canadian. Most people would realize that I came 2nd to Marie Eve at the World Champs last year, so I really wants to have a good showing here. I put everything I had into the headwind section because I knew this was where it would be won or lost and I tried to not worry about what gear I was in but to make sure my cadence stayed high so that I didn't fatigue my legs. But when I turned into the tailwind, I put the gears as high as I could (keeping the same cadence) and hammered home!

I was completely spent at the end, couldn't really talk other than to whisper that I needed water and a cold wet towel, then continued with a warm down. I still had no idea where I had placed. The only thing I knew was that I had caught and passed the French girl about 1km into the race but had no idea where Marie Eve was. To my utter surprise I had WON and not just won but had smashed it beating her by 1 minute 20 seconds and beat the 3rd place male by 20 seconds! So that put me 3rd overall! This has certainly boosted my confidence for London.

The Australians had a very successful day today:
Michael Gallagher - 1st MC5
Sue Powell - 1st WC4,
Nigel Barley -1st MH3,
Carol Cooke (Me) - 1st WT2,
Alexandra Green - 2nd WC4,
Simone Kennedy - 2nd WC3,
Claire McLean - 3rd WC5,
Stuart Tripp - 4th MH4,
Ryan Hughes - 6th MC4,
Jarrad Langmead - 6th MT2,
Bryce Lindores/Mark Jamieson - 10th MB,
Brandie O'Connor/Kerry Knowler - 11th WB,
Alex Welsh - 15th MH2,
Harley Quinlan - 21st MH2