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
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