The final countdown

Competition begins on Friday, so only two more sleeps before we get down to the serious stuff. Touch wood, everyone in the team is feeling good, due in no small part to all the hard work being done by Peter, our physio or more broadly, our soigneur - that means the person who is all things to all people in a cycling team. A very Euro term and very appropriate, given our current location!

Some members of the team ventured onto the velodrome again today for another frantic shared session. It really is quite hair raising when you have three or four different countries with little common language and riders with varying levels of stability all racing around the track focussed solely on their own program. Kerry discovered track skills she didn't want to know she had yesterday, steering the tandem around people from other countries who showed little regard for anyone else's safety! Fortunately everyone survived the session in one piece.

Here's Tom putting his life on the line to inspect Alex's pedal mid session. Or maybe he was just paying homage?

And so, on to introducing some more members of the team.

Sue Powell (L) and Alex Green (R), are our two C4 women. 

This is Alex's first visit to Worlds and she's another convert from rowing (we have three in the team that I'm aware of). She maintains that her entire purpose in rowing, cycling or any form of exercise is so that she can justify eating more, but I think she might actually like the competition just a little bit.

Sue comes from an elite hockey background. When a back injury prevented her from continuing in that sport, cycling was lucky to pick her up, as her results to date show - one world championship, a couple of world records and a swag of other medals make her one of the most credentialled athletes in the team.

Jayme Paris (centre below) is still one of the youngest in the team but has been competing long enough to have quite a lengthy list of achievements to her credit in the C1 division. Along with cycling, she loves her dogs, lizards and Welsh fiance, not necessarily in that order!

I've noted the divisions that people compete in. If you're not familiar with the classifications I'd suggest a visit to the UCI website for more information however in a nutshell the classifications go from C5 - least disabled, down to C1, then the B divisions which are the vision impaired athletes who compete on the tandems. There are other divisions, but not on the track so we won't go into them here.

Tune in for the next blog to meet the remainder of the team and I might even manage a preview of our prospects at these Championships if I can get the coaching brains trust together to give me some bold predictions.

Roads that don't exist

Today Brandie and I went out for a short ride in the countryside around Montichiari. I studied the local maps, checked on google maps and wrote up directions for a ride of the appropriate length at this stage of preparation for the Championships. Well, let me tell you, don't trust local maps! Half of the roads that I'd selected for us to ride on simply didn't exist or were little more than goat tracks. Fortunately we didn't go any further than a few kilometres away from town in any direction so there were no real dramas but it was quite a funny experience.

Anyway, rather than telling you how nice the weather is (beautiful sunny day if a little chilly!) or that we had another successful day at the track in spite of there being three or four teams on there at once all trying to do their own thing, I decided over the next few days to introduce you to the team. We'll start with the tandems.

Here's Kieran Modra (L) and Scott McPhee (R). At 19, Scott's the

youngster of the team, but is very capable in his role as pilot of the "Modra Express". He was plucked out of a blossoming road career to return to the track on the tandem and so far its proven to be a successful combination.

Kieran is a Paralympic veteran, having represented Australia at four Games in cycling, one in swimming and one in track and field. He's been trying to retire from cycling for the last 10 years, but the lure of competition somehow keeps him going. He's the cameraman of the team, taking his video camera on the bike with him whenever possible to record the experience.

Our other men's tandem team is Bryce Lindores (L) and Sean Finning (R).

Sean is an accomplished cyclist in his own right and at last month's Australian Track Championships stepped off the front of the tandem and into the elite men's points race, where he caused a lot of anxious moments for many of his fresher opponents.

Bryce is the Karaoke King of the team and can always be relied upon for a bit of musical entertainment with his stirring renditions of 80s favourites. He wants to drive the bus around for us, but we're not sure how he'd go driving on the 'wrong' side of the road!

And finally tonight, one of the women's tandems, piloted by Stephanie Morton (L) with Felicity Johnson (R) in the engine room.

Steph is also an elite rider in her spare time away from the tandem and placed second in the 2011 Australian 500m Time Trial Championship. She's very pleased to have Scott in the team or she'd be the youngest!

Felicity, or "Flick" as she's known to her friends, is the quiet achiever of the team. She might not look like a sprinter and I'm not sure that the nickname has anything to do with how she rides the bike, but make no mistake about her contribution to the tandem's speed as the team's stoker. Look out for this pair when the results come in for the women's tandem 1000m time trial because they're motoring!

That's all the introductions I can manage this time around, but keep watching as I help you get to know the rest of the Aussie team for 2011.

A very short Spring

Around dinner time last night the wind blew up and blew Winter back into Montichiari! From sunny, perfect cycling conditions yesterday, we woke this morning to freezing windy overcast stay-indoors conditions. Our track session was in the late morning and it only managed to get to around 16 degrees indoors so everything was a bit slower to get moving. The ergos came in very handy for extra warm ups and recovery post session.

Here's Alex (nearest camera) warming up, while Steph and Felicity do a whole session on the ergos, having suffered a major mechanical on the tandem. Steph's so powerful she literally ripped the pedal out of the crank! A lot of time and effort has gone into rectifying the problem but things are looking up now. In the meantime they're only able to train on the ergos.

This afternoon there was a brief opportunity for a bit of sightseeing so half the group headed out for a guided tour of the local area courtesy Paul, the boys' tandem coach, while the rest of us explored the area surrounding our hotel. This is Lago di Garda, with just enough snow in the background to prove it's really there. (photo courtesy Steph)

Those of us closer to home investigated Castello Bonoris, the 12th century castle overlooking the town. Unfortunately it's only open on the weekends and since next weekend is right in the middle of the Championships, it's unlikely we'll get to explore. Still, its pretty impressive from the outside.

Tomorrow marks three days til the start of competition and the day we have to start sharing our track sessions with other countries. It will be interesting with 28 bikes including tandems and single bikes all going around together but I'm sure we'll all cope! Ciao for now...

First day on the boards

This morning Brandie and I went for a fabulous ride to the town of Lonato. The road was flat and straight and the views of the snow on the nearby mountains did nothing to dampen our enthusiasm. In Brandie's case that may have been because she couldn't actually see the snow but more likely that it was a beautiful clear, sunny day and perfect cycling conditions. Oh yeah, and we didn't actually have to go as far as the snow!

This afternoon was the team's first experience of the Velodromo Montichiari. Although very similar in shape to Adelaide, it's very different in appearance with no logos on the banking and very little adornment anywhere else. Given it's a reasonably new velodrome, I expect the sponsors names haven't quite made it into paint just yet.

And how about that ceiling structure. It's quite spectacular to stand underneath it.

We had a good training session with the athletes undertaking a variety of sessions dictated by level of residual jet lag, from just getting the legs moving to a range of more serious efforts.  The track seems quite fast to the point that there were even a couple of personal best times recorded, but I couldn't tell you who did them because we have to keep the opposition guessing!  We have been joined by one of Cycling Australia's best mechanics, John Keegan and thanks to him, all the bikes are running smoothly, gear changes are undertaken with a minimum of fuss and my hands aren't anywhere near as greasy as last week. Thank you John!

With only four more days to the start of competition, the countdown is really on and our crew is looking really good.  More later...

Change in the weather

Buona sera. That's Italian for good evening, because that's what it is now for us. We set off from Adelaide midday on Friday feeling happy to be on the move -

Needless ro say, we weren't this bright when we arrived in Milan some 25 hours later but we did still manage to recover all bikes and baggage! And the only thing that went missing from my bag when the zip popped and spilled my belongings out on the baggage carousel was a small tube of hand cream, so not a bad outcome really!

A short (relatively) drive in sultry 5 degree temperatures saw us arrive in Montichiari and checked into our hotel - Hotel Faro, then it was off to the velodrome to put the bikes together once again and make sure the road bikes, generously lent to us by the AIS program, all fitted our team. Everyone looks fabulous on their borrowed Bianchis and Kez even managed some acrobatics to prove she wasn't jetlagged too much.

This is the velodrome from the outside - very space age!

Elite athletes don't get much rest so this afternoon it was time for the girls to ride out any residual travel fatigue and try out their 'new' bikes.

We're all reaching shutdown point now. I don't think it will be long after dinner before everyone speeds off to the land of nod, ready to get back into training tomorrow and looking forward to the championships starting next Friday.

Stay tuned...

Finishing on a good note

Yesterday Scody was announced as a major sponsor for the Australian Para Cycling Team for next year's Paralympic Games in London.  This is fantastic news for the program, so everyone turned out for their last track training session in full Scody kit to show their appreciation.  Here are our very own "Scody Girls" relaxing between training efforts -

Let me introduce the team L-R, Felicity (tandem stoker), Steph (tandem pilot), Sue (C4), Brandie (tandem stoker), Jayme (C1), and Kerry (tandem pilot). Our other female team member Alex couldn't make it for the photo unfortunately, probably other media commitments....

However, it's not all lounging around as the following show:

That's Sue carving up the boards

and Kerry and Brandie checking out the top of the track

Today is our last day before we fly out for Italy and it's not all sunshine and roses. Oh no, elite athletes still have to pack their own bikes for the trip so a few hours were spent under the velodrome today rather than on it, fully immersed in bubble wrap and packing tape! Those diagonal boards at the top left of this photo are the banking of the velodrome, for those who might be interested.

We fly out tomorrow morning, so there may be a lull in posts for a while depending on internet access.  Who knows - it's a big small world these days!

Bruises, bee stings and boo boos

You may think being in a National team training camp before going away to World Championships would be all sunshine and roses, but not necessarily so.

Yesterday we had a couple of low speed tumbles, largely due to limited familiarity with local traffic conditions - fortunately no real harm done and I won't name names because that would just be mean! We also managed a bee giving up its life for the bee cause after getting caught inside a jersey. Yep, a bee sting on the chest smarts for a while!

And to round out the fun and games, there was the athlete who put the wrong gear on her bike by mistake and ended up pedalling way faster at training than any of us anticipated. Some of you will work out who that was if you've been following the blog closely.

Yours truly isn't squeaky clean either - the rest of the management team had great fun at my expense after I underestimated the power of the B & K tandem team and didn't do their back wheel up tight enough resulting in a rather hasty stop to one of their standing start efforts and the 'real' mechanic stepping in to set things right!

All in all, a pretty full couple of days with a bit of variation to the normal routine to give people a few chuckles along the way.