Herald Sun Tour for Laydeez (or Spot the Honda Hybrid)

The Honda Hybrid Women's Tour (otherwise known as Sort Of The Herald Sun Tour But With More Chicks And Less Coconut Oil) kicked off in earned last Thursday. Thursday is usually my sabbath; it's my day off work and I get to spend it with Donna and the chicks getting my legs ripped off behind a speeding four wheel drive as I try to remember where the dips in the road are. It's a special day. Lately my sabbath has also incorporated a packet of grainwaves on the drive home from Geelong, which has made the Princes Hwy so much more fun and has taught me the move my Dad calls Thighmatic Control as I try to get the crumbs out of the corner of the packet. (This is why I drive an automatic)

This Thursday, however, was different because it was Honda Hybrid Tour time. This involved 80 women, around 12 teams and 3 stages - a road race in Anglesea, TT in Geelong and crit in Lygon St, Melbourne.

I was in the SASI-QAS team (easily the coolest maroon/white/black/red/blue team in the tour). Line up was:

• Zoe 'Breakaway Bandit' Appel
• Carlee 'Bloody' Taylor
• Lou 'GC Contender and Captain Smiles' Kerr
• Bec 'I eat babies for fun' Werner
• Tish 'I also eat babies, but it's not fun' Custance
• Ange 'I conduct citizen's arrests if I'm given too much coffee' McClure
• Lisa 'Smith & Weston' Jacobs
• Directeur extraordinaire: Ben 'Buddha' Cook

The QASI team was joined by the NTID team (also very cool, even without maroon):

• Sarah 'Roids' Roy
• Carly 'Buzz Light Year' Light
• Bec 'I love doing TTs by braille' Doolan
• Laura 'No, I don't do triathlon' Luxford
• Alex 'I love angry Geelong drivers' Carle
• Bron 'Secret weapon' Ryan
• Chef de Mission: Michel 'Gabriel Gate'

And Bec 'Bionic collarbone' Halliday was just too damned fast and formed her own team, taking out sprint, GC and stage honours for Velo Girls.

The teams were managed by Tammie 'Braking for bins is for wimps' Ebert and Josh 'Pistols don't kill people, people kill people' Sear. And Donna 'D-Dog' Rae-Szalinski performed life-saving brownie duties. It was a tight ship.

It was a relief to rock up at the start and see that out of all the team, we definitely would not look the worst after the rain hit (not that I don't like white kits, I'm just no good at separating my washing). And hit it did, which made the end of the road race a wee bit tight, and wreaked havoc for the first starters on the TT the next day. Geelong may have a good football team, but it sure does have some shit weather sometimes.

The tour was an outstanding success, mostly because no one died and we pushed the average of collarbones-broken-per-national-series-crit-race down a little for 2009. Notable performances came from Carly Light (3rd GC) and Bron Ryan (4th GC), but I like to say that Honda Hybrid was the winner.

The results are on www.cyclingnews.com and www.womenscycling.net, which I dare say also offers a more accurate race report.

Vive le velo

Gunz