The Australian Para Cycling Road Championships on the Sunshine Coast are done and dusted. Our crew came out of the weekend with some mixed results.
The time trial on Saturday was run in very poor conditions, with pouring rain and gusting wind while the Canberra riders were out on course.
The conditions didn't seem to bother Sue too much. She added yet another Australian Championship to her palmares, edging out the 'now-not-so-new' kid on the block, Alex Green from Sydney. More significantly though, Sue easily made the automatic qualifying speed to meet selection requirements to compete in the World Road Championships in Denmark later this year. Sue's average speed of more than 37.5km/h was well above the required 35.6km/h for her division.
Not so fortunate were Brandie and Kerry on the tandem. While they won the championship convincingly, their average speed in the high 40s for the 24km distance fell agonisingly short of the automatic qualifying speed by around 4/100 sec. The weather was a bit of a factor in this, making braking and cornering that bit more difficult given the length and bulk of the tandem versus a single bike. Not to worry, they have another couple of chances in the Oceania Championships coming up this weekend and the Sydney World Cup in early May.
Jing showed enormous improvement from last year to record a win in her division with an average speed just shy of 30km/h. Unfortunately Jing needed to record 33.18km/h for automatic qualification so still a bit of work to do, but she's definitely headed in the right direction and once she starts time trialling on a time trial specific bike the improvement should be significant. Yes, that's right, this result was posted on her normal road bike, so that puts a bit of perspective on the average speed in my humble opinion, otherwise, why would they have designed time trial specific bikes!
In his first national competition in hand cycling, Richo found out what it's like to play with the big kids. His third place in the time trial in such short time in this form of competition shows that there's a big future for him when he gets a handle on it! (Yeah, I know, poor joke!)
On Sunday the weather gods were a bit kinder, delivering warm sunny conditions for the road races.
All the girls again pulled out wins in their respective divisions, possibly as expected. The highlight was Jing's win in her division, finishing in a time considerably quicker than a competitor (from a different division) who beat her last year when their divisions were combined.
Richo, who I'm told is not particularly suited to long distance racing, gave his triceps a real workout just to finish the road race with another third place to add to his collection.
Well done to all and good luck for the Oceania Championships this weekend. For anyone who wants a bit more information, here's the website -
http://www.cycling.org.au/default.asp?ID=40881&MenuID=Events_and_Results%2F20011%2F0
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