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Wrap up: Tour de la rele`ve internationale de Rimouski

Made it back from Canada in one piece, and boy am I glad to finally be back in my own bed, on my own schedule, eating non-cafeteria food and wearing normal non-spandex clothes! Here's a brief summary of how each stage in the Tour de Rimouski played out:

- 7/12: ÉTAPE 1 – Lac-des-Aigles, 68km: 5th GC, 1:48 behind leader. Attack came after start, tried to bridge the gap with Maddie, but no dice! Ariane and Dafné still stayed away after many attempts. It's amazing how great my legs felt for the GP the previous day, and how stale they felt today. After being pulled back in, I copped a wicked bonk before the KOM (riding off near the back to be exact!) and 20km-to-go mark, and suffered like a pig to stay with the group for the sprint finish where I still managed to crack top-10. Jenna had a great race today, getting 4th!! 

-7/12: ÉTAPE 2 - team time trial, 7km: 1st place! We won the ttt with a time of 8:37. The course was dead flat, but had several tricky corners, and it poured during our race (remember: in case of flood, climb to safety). We worked extremely well together with Saskia "The Diesel" Kowalchuk, taking some massive pulls up at the front, and Maddie and Jenna riding extremely well. Jenna came off of a great finish with the morning's road race, but flatted during the ttt, which was unfortunate so we came in with just 3 riders.  I ate a lot of grime. CHCH sitting 1st for team GC.

- 7/14: ÉTAPE 3 - Mont Joli, 78.2km: 6th on GC, bunch sprint finish. Lots of good climbing today, but no breaks were effective. We tried to team up with other teams to counter Atrium I (team with yellow jersey) but no dice – they shut everything down. Other teams just didn't keep their word. I thought that was lame, but like Rick said: if people don't hold their word, you remember that always in bike racing. Watch out girls...I won't forget! 

- 7/15: ÉTAPE 4 - individual time trial, 6km: Finished 9th in the time trial, 16 seconds behind winner Emma White, another American rider (she killed it!). Felt real slow today; like I took 10 giant steps backwards or something. I had a great warm-up, but just couldn't wind it up. Sitting 6th on GC. 

- 7/15: ÉTAPE 5 - crit, 1km lap 45min racing: We had that whole race controlled to a T. I've never raced so aggressively – I attacked multiple times, and rode off the front with a hefty gap for nearly 7 laps. When I was caught, my teammates would counter, and when they were caught I'd attack again. We had our lead out train in place for Emma White in place for the finishing sprint (about 1 lap to go), however, heading into the last turn the whole front of the field was taken out (including me and all of my teammates). Lots of road rash, sprained left foot, hard hit to the head and several broken spokes. I stacked it man, hard. Let's see, they had me finishing second to last in that race, my GC dropped from 6th to 21st. I'm so happy with how each of us rode though, especially Maddie who got the red jersey (most combative rider)! 

- 7/16: ÉTAPE 6 - Rimouski Circuit race, 57.7km: Ditched the crutches to race in the morning, despite my left foot and discomfort. I refused accepting defeat: I wanted to finish the Tour, and at this point my GC didn't really matter. I stayed with the pack for 2 of the 5 laps, then dropped off the back and rode the rest alone. Kilometers passed like kidney stones; I don't think I ever want to race on muscle relaxants again! I'll have to write that one down in my list of no-no's. Finished the race in 29th, overal GC for the Tour 22nd. At least for the points classification I was 7th. Went straight from the bike to the crutches.

Neat coverage...in French! 

Max speed: 200km/hr! Nah, don't worry, I didn't drive the car...
I was just wet and cold after the tt and jumped into the van to stay warm!

Start of the crit 

During the crit. Very wide non-technical course, with sweeping fast turns. 
I enjoyed whipping around them as fast as I could manage driving my bike. 

Emma getting the sprint points half way through the race after I lead her out, she had
a great race.! Even after the crashing, she got up and hopped back on her bike (cx style) to finish.
Way to represent your cx homies Emma!                          

* * * 

And that's a wrap for the 2012 Project de Rimouski. 

Many thanks to the KMS team and our sponsors for making my first international race experience possible for me – I grew as an athlete and an individual tremendously. Many thanks to the CHCH parents who fed us, drove us and put up with us day after day, and especially to the coaches Rick and Lloyd who kept us organized and focused before, during and after the racing. We had a lot going on during this whole trip, but we worked together as a team (both on and off the bike), and I believe that's why we were so successful. What a neat experience and great showing for team CHCH!  

The girls team after spending several hours in Quebec City.
I'm going to miss them!

Bart Hazen / Daily Peloton Article

Here's a neat write up in the Daily Peloton from the GP de Rimouski. 

My new friend, Bart Hazen – who works for Cyclocross Magazine, did a great job capturing the action.  He took a lot of great photos, but I found this one to be one of my all-time favorites. 

I guess these guys suffer too, eh? 

Grand Prix Cycliste de Rimouski

Today's race was the Grand Prix cycliste de Rimouski. It is the only UCI - 1.1 sanctioned event for junior women in North America and is held prior to the Tour de la relève internationale de Rimouski. 

The GP de Rimouski official race report can be viewed here. 

Anyways, we were up by 6am for breakfast. Our bikes are being held at a hockey arena under security, so we headed to the arena by 7:30am, got our race wheels on, numbers pinned etc etc and rode to the start line right at 8. Rick put us on the rollers for 15 minutes, then we went up and road 2km from the start line to ride the last turn that opens up onto the finishing stretch. It's easily the longest 2k homestretch I've ever ridden! We then signed in as a team at the start line, completed rollout with the UCI officials and sat for about 15 minutes waiting for the 9am start.

Top 10 results

And finally it was 9am! We rolled out and within 3km we hit the first wall of a climb. Lucky for us, Rick and Lloyd drove us around the course last night and I made lots of notes on the tech guide, so I was familiar with the course. It's an 80km HILLY route with the majority of the climbing taking place between 20km and 60km, with a kicker right at 5k to go. A perfect course for a Vermont, eh?

Earlier on in the race when we were still together.
The Canadian National Road Champ, Ariane Bonhomme is on the far right.
I ended up putting 4+ minutes on her, and Maddy put nearly just as much. Just sayin'...

Anyways, a lot of girls made silly accelerations at the beginning on some of the rollers, but of course nothing went. At 20km finally the climbing began. I had shifting issues, so I literally went from the front of the pack to the rear while this year's Canadian Road Champion, Arian Bonhomme, attacked off the front. Finally when things started working again I accelerated from the rear of the pack up to the front where my teammate, Madelein McConnel was, and we both counter attacked to bridge up to Arian. We put the hurt to everyone. Eventually, we closed the gap, but Arian was then so wasted from her efforts that we couldn't maintain the break. The pack of 10 that had survived the first climb caught us, and I sat in (frustrated!) only to attack again 5km later on a grindy climb. Finally I got away with my CHCH teammate Madelein and another Canadian rider, Josiane Lessard. I knew this was going to be a good break, because Maddie is one hell of a climber, and I hoped our teammates were somewhere behind us trying to control the pack. 

Coach Rick, Jenna, me, Madelein, Saskia and Coach Lloyd at the team tent after the GP de Rimouski

Coach Rick and Coach Lloyd – two of the greatest guys you will ever meet.
Their support and expertise has been really tremendous so far. I'm one lucky girl! 

We ended up putting nearly 3 minutes on the pack. I did lots of pulling with Maddie, and Josiane wasn't quite doing her fair share...but in the end that got her! With 8km to go on one of the last grindy climbs Josiane and I were climbing neck and neck (Madelein had dropped off but continued to ride hard!) and at the very top where the climb hurt the most I just stood up and attacked. I remembered Rick saying that this was the last part of the course to really get away for a solo win, so knowing that it was my last chance, I just hit it as hard as I could.

Josiane Lessard leads up one of the climbs.

Getting ready to attack with 5km to go

Getting ready to launch that attack at 5km...

...And the gap began to grow. I passed the 5km sign and I just kept my head down. Occasionally I would look back to see if the gap was growing, and indeed it was. But I didn't want to get too comfortable, so I still was riding hard. I opened up the gap to about 20 seconds. Motorcycle officials, and UCI cars kept driving up and down the road honking horns (to give a heads up they'd be passing me) and giving time splits.  

I came into the finishing stretch with several police cars leading me with their lights on...it was crazy! 1km to go...500m to go...200m to go and I threw my hands up and just yelled as I crossed the finish line in first! I couldn't believe it. I crossed the finish line with a 12 second gap in front of Josiane Lessard, and Madelein came in 1.3 minutes behind us. Two CHCH girls on the podium!

GP Podium

"I won, I won! Now I don't have to go to school!" -Eddy Merckx after winning his first bike race.
Here I am after awards, with my GP trophy and medal. 

Podium with the race officials/organizers.

This is a huge result. This is basically the biggest Jr. Women's race in the world besides the World Championships. The CC races are Continental Championships, which are lower than Cat 1.1 and the only other 1.1 race is a TT in France after Worlds. My fingers are crossed that something big will become of this win.

If there is one thing I do know, it's that I couldn't have done it without my teammates. I'm excited to continue the racing in the Tour de la relève internationale de Rimouski with such talented girls. 5 more days of hard racing! Let's see what Team CHCH can do.


Thanks for all of my sponsors and the KMS team back home for giving me the opportunity to race in Canada! 

Louis Garneau Club House

The Louis Garneau club house is a pretty neat place to be staying before Rimouski. It sits on the banks right above the St.Lawrence River on a converted horse farm. The house itself has a great bunkhouse above the tv and kitchen area, where all of the girls are sleeping. Out back beyond the large garage and barn we pitched numerous tents for the boys. Everywhere you look it's blue skies...green grass and some smaller hills (small by Vermont standards, that is!) off in the distance. It's extremely windy, but it's refreshing after having to deal with stuffy air back in Ontario. It's crisp, and it has just enough of a bite to it to feel leave you feeling completely refreshed.  Of course, the wind is not exactly welcomed when we are on our bikes...

Louis Garneau team car and trailer 

The barn where we've been keeping our bikes and where we house the rollers

Just a shot of the boys tents. Putting them up was a real pain – it was super windy and we were super tired.
What  a bad combination! 

Anyways, we had a 10+ hour drive from Ontario to get to the house (just outside of QC). After pitching tents, unpacking the van and getting our living space situations figured out, we all hit the rollers for 30 minutes. I hadn't been on rollers in what seemed like ages (!), but Rick helped me out for maybe 15 seconds before I got the hang of it. Rollers are nice, because there's no resistance, so it's a great way to just open the legs up and have a nice high cadence. The only hard part is of course balancing. Sometimes you can ride yourself off the rollers or lose your balance and hit the floor. Luckily none of this happened to us.

This morning I hit the rollers again, this time at 7.30am and with the boys – we blasted music (I'm talking techo-pump up and some Nirvana!) and the girls got a bit grumpy about being woken up by the vibrating bass of the music because the garage is directly below our bunk. To that I say though luck – 7.30am isn't early by bike racer standards anyways...

After showering and eating breakfast we headed out at 10am for our ride. We rode ~12km out along the main road here to a little snack bar. All the while, we passed quite a bit of other riders headed in the opposite direction – must have been some sort of a charity ride. Anyways, Rick had us start at 30 second intervals for a 5k individual tt; basically he wanted to get some numbers and see where everyone stood. I posted the second fastest time for the girls, about 5 seconds off of Saskia, who is the Canadian National TT champion! After heading back to the snackbar we then did a ttt effort on the same 5k course. Things were slow in my group today – which was quite frustrating. Everyone (including myself!) was pretty sloppy with their transitions, and I passed the 5k mark not even feeling wasted. That left me scratching my head a bit. I'd say we have some things to tweak before Rimouski. 

After lunch I headed down to the St.Lawrence River (about 1km away) with Miles' mom, Kathy. It was such a beautiful afternoon! When we emerged from the trail, there was still quite some distance to the actual river, but we did have sandy beaches to walk along, so after collecting some neat rocks and snapping a few pictures we headed West along the sand. 

A barn on the way to the St.Lawrence 

Miles' mom talking about the St.Lawrence. Since her son had done a project on the river and immigration in 5th grade, she still remembered a lot of interesting facts about the whole journey for the new settlers. Pretty neat! 

Our footprints in the sand. We walked to the very end before the sand became a bog...

We had a great 1hr team meeting tonight, talking about tactics and attacking, and everything in between. Rick outlined 4 essential things as a checklist for us, and the first 3 were pretty simple to check off (training? healthy? bike good?). The fourth was BELIEF. He then asked us to think about the upcoming race, and think about our chances of winning. If we believed we could win the race, he asked us to raise our hands. The majority (myself included) raised our hands, but a few didn't. He didn't say anything, but he then told us that when he was coaching a team of elite triathletes headed to Nationals way back when in Australia, he asked them the same question – 'which of you here think you will win a medal?' And not one of them raised their hands.  For crying out loud, they were freakin' ELITE athletes – the creme de la creme – and even they struggled to see themselves winning something they had trained so hard for in the past year. He said if you aren't 100% mentally prepared to believe in yourself while the other three factors of training, health and equipment are taken care of, you won't reach your full potential as a competitor and your just wasting your time. You should be able to look in the mirror after each race, and tell yourself that you did everything you could to ride your best. Even if you didn't win or you came in last place – if you gave it your all, in the end that's all that matters. And the same is true for contributing towards your team. 

Hearing Rick talk about these things was really great – especially with so much racing coming up, these are just the things you need before absolutely killing yourself each day for 7 days. It's going to be an interesting journey! 

Canada: Day 1

Well, made it to Dundas, Ontario yesterday without any troubles. Crossing into Canada was easy: the guard was more interested in talking to us about our bikes, confessing his affection for Cervelo's and watching the Tour...needless to say, we definitly weren't expecting that!

Before we leave for the Louis Garneau Center near Quebec City, we are staying in Hamilton to do some riding (where the CHCH center is located). I am staying with Miles Eastwood and his family with my teammate Peter Jr. and they are a wonderful family! Miles, who is 15, will be racing with Peter jr. in Rimouski, and he's a great kid. A unique thing about Miles is that he has a special thing for smoothies (smoothie time is serious time, as I've observed in the mornings).  Everyone here is friendly and easy going, and best of all they love biking. Great combinations!

Team CHCH photo after our ride. Lots of helmet hair...

Anyways, in the afternoon we rode from the Eastwood's house to the CHCH center (about 11km/7mi away). We arrived for the 5pm ride, met most of the CHCH team, and we did our introductioncs before heading off for the big ride.

Rick, the CHCH coach (who is from Australia), broke us up into our 4-man teams when we arrived at the TT loop on White Swan Road. We set out to do 2 laps together, each lap was about 14k. The first lap was chaotic: everyone was trying to rip one another's legs off, so there was a lot of accelerations, de-accelerations, and terrible transistions between the 30 second pulls at the front in our paceline. At the start of our second lap, I told everyone that I thought we should try to focus more on keeping things even between pulls (no mashing of the pedals!) and everyone seemed to agree. We rode things much smoother and quite a bit faster. Good progress for day 1.

After practice, I got my Team CHCH kit and the guest-riders all donned the new kits for individual and team photos. They are very slick, and very comfortable. Afterwards Miles, Peter Jr. and myself rode back to the house with several other riders. And get this, we even have an Australian rider here! His name is Michael and he's a super nice little Aussie. He'll also be racing with Peter Jr. and Miles.

We have practice tomorrow at 12 noon in the heat of the day and more TTT work is on the agenda. Apparently it's supposed to reach upwards of 100F -- a record for this time of year in Canada. I can't wait to look at the thermometer at 9am at breakfast and have it read 85F! Hopefully the heat doesn't get us too bad...I don't want to turn into a swamp thing from all of the radiation!

We'll be leaving for the Louis Garneau Training Center on Saturday at 6am. That's near QC, so that means more time in the car driving to do...more biking! I feel like that's my second job these days. Maybe I should become a trucker?

Tour de la rele`ve internationale de Rimouski

On July 4th – July 16th I'll be in Canada for some bike racing!

As if my trip down to Augusta, Georgia wasn't enough, on July 4th – July 16th I'll be training, racing and living with some new Canadian teammates! I will be guest riding for the National Cycling Centre Hamilton team called Team CHCH, based out of Hamilton, Ontario. This centre is one of five nationally recognized centres in Canada that is responsible for identifying, recruiting, testing, coaching and training high performance development athletes in the Province of Ontario. In just five years since their program started, they've accumulated over 22 medals at National Championships and their program has produced several Canadian National team members. By no means is this a club team! 

Imagine after 2 days: the amount of time you have spent in the car exceeds your time spent on the bike.
All I can say is that I got out to stretch my legs at lunch on our way to GA, and then I just kinda lost it...

I will be riding on the Junior Women U19 team with three other Canadian based female riders. I will be racing in the Grand Prix cycliste de Rimouski on July 11th, an international race intended for junior women ONLY – and get this: it's the only 1.1 UCI sanctioned race in America for Junior Women cyclists. 

The GP happens the day before the second event, the Tour de la relève internationale de Rimouski. The Tour de Rimouski (as I'll call it to keep things short) is a six-stage race for both male and females ranging from 15-16 and 17-18. It will take place on July 12th – July 15th. 

Check out my new set up! I'm now running a 52x14. 

I have been waiting for these events ever since the Team CHCH head coach, Rick Lee, made contact with my coach about this opportunity way back in early May. I am excited be on a team with other junior women, and compete against other Canadian, US and European riders. My racing experience consists of only regional and national events, and it has always been a personal goal to race in Canada. Looks like I'll be able to spend my last few races as a junior for road livin' the dream. 

Here is the news release for Rimouski on the Team CHCH website.

The official Tour de Rimouski event website is here. 


Thanks to the KMS team and our sponsors for making this opportunity possible. 

Race #3: Nationals RR

Man, I slept horribly last night after the crit – I dunno what it was but I was pretty nervous for today's road race. I woke up at 7:15 to eat some breakfast, then we headed out in the van to the course at 8:30. My start time was 10:45, which meant that I'd be riding in the heat of the day. 

When we arrived I had over an hour before my start, so I leisurely pinned my jersey, made my bottles up for the feed and got into my kit. I'm so tired of drinking fluids – I feel like that's all I've been doing, but it's important to stay hydrated in this heat, so I continued to sip from my bottle before the start. 

Rolling off of the starting line...

After being rolled out again, I sat at the start line (luckily in some shade from the USAC banner) and we were off! Everyone was pretty antsy, but eventually we all settled in and began riding. Our race was 3 laps on a 15 mile course within the military base, with lots of rollers and it was blazin' hot.

I sat in all three laps, not doing a lot of work. Unfortunately, during the third lap with about 6miles to go the pack shifted left and I was caught right on the edge of where the pavement meets the sand and unfortunately got pushed off entirely to the side of the road – I'm talking in the bushes! Luckily the sand was packed down pretty well and I rode along side the road for about 200ft, looking for a way to hop back onto the pavement, but the drop-off was too much. All the while the pack was riding away pretty fast. I unclipped, ran onto the road and did a cross mount, clipped back in and buried myself to bridge back up to the pack. I eventually made it, but before I could recover from my effort Alexis and Grace (the two riders who I was most worried about!) attacked, and I just didn't have any gas to make that break. Watching them ride away was tough, but I hoped we could bring them back in.

This gives you an idea of how hot it was...

Well, wishful thinking. By the end of the race, the two of them put on 2 minutes on our pack: none of Alexis's teammates wanted to pull (understandable), but several other teams weren't working either. It was frustrating, because I wanted to bring them back in but I didn't want to waste myself. I could feel the heat really getting to me, and that was tough.

On the finishing climb, my legs felt pretty good, but at the top it sweeps right and opens up into the finishing stretch – a downhill sprint. One rider attacked right at the crest of the hill, one other followed and I just had no response. I watched them ride away while I tried my best to start sprinting for 5th. My legs felt so lame in that sprint, and in the end I had to settle for 7th.

Man, the heat really got to me today and I am excited to be done racing – don't get me wrong, this whole experience has been wonderful but it's been stressful to say the least! I'm thankful for the support of my coach, family, friends and teammates throughout my first Junior Road Nationals showing; unfortunately it will be my last Junior Nationals. Next year, it'll be Collegiate Nats and U23 races. 

So that's a wrap from Augusta GA. 5th in the ITT, 6th in the crit, 7th in the RR. Not too shabby!

Race #2: Nationals Crit

Headed to downtown Augusta for my crit on Friday afternoon. My race went off at 1:45pm and with each passing minute things only were getting warmer. We parked right before the first turn on the course near the sidewalk and set up shop in right under several huge trees for shade. After sitting around doing nothing and sweating, I finally popped my bike on the trainer, slipped into my skin suit and started blasting my 'warm-up' playlist on my ancient iPod (having a broken back-light on that baby makes things interesting...). After doing some openers I headed to the start line, where they had us complete rollout. The top 5 girls were called up to the front row, and the rest of us filed in behind them. I somehow managed to sneak my way to the front row on the right side, right next to the barriers.

Our race was a total of 12 laps on the 1-mile course, and it started out pretty mellow. The field isn't big to begin with (23 riders total!), but the course has a lot of turns on it and boy were they skeetchyyyy with some of those riders. I tried my best to stay up near the front marking any moves from the more important riders, but the only attack that went successfully was with 1 lap to go! The 7 of us made it through the back stretch (I was on the back, holding on for dear life) and I was still on the back coming into the homestretch. I moved up from 7th to 6th, but my sprint was so stale compared to the other girls, and I missed 5th (and the podium) by half a wheel. 

Anyways, we got these new skin suits just in time for Nationals with our new sponsors, but since I am headed off to college in about a month I only got a long sleeve – that's right, I raced long sleeve in the 95º heat! I felt like I absorbed enough radiation from the sun to become a swamp thing! 

Race #1: Nationals ITT

First race at Nationals is done! Yesterday was the ITT. My race was 12 miles on a rolling course (6 miles out and back). Things were pretty hectic before my start, but I managed to get there with enough time to complete rollout. I had a tube of ice (packed in some panty-hose...) stuffed down the back of my skinsuit to keep my core nice and cool throughout my race, and it worked very well. Although I had strange water marks all along my backside...

Women's 17/18 TT podium 

Anyways, the course starts out on a dam, and immediately after I shot out of the start gate I settled in to suffer. Last year's winning time was around 29 minutes, but the top five riders finished within 1 minute or so from that time, so my goal was to finish the race in under 30 minutes to at least make the podium. 

2012 ITT Podium, Junior Women 17-18.

I passed a lot of girls on the rollers (tiny little things coming from Vermont!) and that's where I made up a lot of time. My mouth was extremely dry on the second leg of the TT – the whole race I had it wide open attempting to get as much air as possible (not sure how aero that is...). Anyways, before hitting the bridge and coming into the homestretch I passed another rider, and I was gaining on the next rider in front of me but I just couldn't close the gap before the finish.

Less than 200m from the finish! 

Coming out of the starting gate.

I crossed the line in 30:14.72 good enough for a 5th place finish! Not too bad, especially since I wasn't running a $15,000 time trial rig! You can see full results here. Coming into the TT I really didn't have any expectations for myself; while I had been practicing quite a bit since KSR and tweaking my position, this race was only my fourth TT race ever.

Me and my teammate Ian after our award ceremonies. He also placed 5th in his age group!