1 year ago, I was a dedicated triathlete, dead-set against leaving Tasmania, I was petrified of the idea of living in a college and the thought of being a physio bored me. 10 weeks ago, if you'd told me I was going to be given an offer to join a domestic women's cycling team and be given a top level racing bike, kit, helmet, shoes, opportunities to race across Australia, along with an amazing network of people, I would've thought that sounded absolutely amazing but so very far-fetched. So, where do I find myself? sitting in my room at college in Adelaide having just returned from my first National Road Series cycling tour competing with my team SpecializedWomens- SA and studying physiotherapy. ..?!
Just taking this a few steps back, it wasn't until about May last year that I decided (and I'm really not sure what made me decide) that I did actually want to study physiotherapy. Still, I was very much against leaving home and so decided that I'd study exercise science in Launceston for 3.5 years (the full degree) and then apply to study a Masters of Physiotherapy in Adelaide in 2016. This would give me plenty of time to get used to the idea of moving away from Tasmania and if I changed my mind then the course was very general and I could study another health profession. This idea didn't last very long (luckily). I soon found myself realising that it wasn't Launceston or my house that made it so hard to leave, but the people in it. As all of my best 5 school friends were planning on moving away, my brother Luke was planning a move from uni in Sydney to Adelaide, and my brother Ben and his girlfriend Mikaela were probably going to move out of home at some stage, I realised that I needed to grow up, challenge myself and put myself well and truly out of my comfort zone.
I only applied for physio in Adelaide which was a little bit risky with an ATAR of 98.8 needed for automatic entry. During exams I became more and more stressed each one as I thought I'd gone badly in each one and became further from moving to Adelaide which I was, by then, really excited to do. When I opened my email to see that I had attained an ATAR of 98.1 I had a little teary. I was off to Adelaide to study physio. It wasn't the score I needed for automatic entry but it was pretty close and I received bonus points for being rural which gave me an adjusted ATAR of 99.95 (handy!). All holidays I was super excited for my move but pretty nervous and it was constantly on my mind. I had no idea what to expect or how my life would change. For the last month, I really needed to just move already. I was over waiting for the unknown and was over thinking about how much I'd miss the people I love in my hometown. Finally the big day came and Dad, Luke and I drove over.
Since I moved to Adelaide on the 19th of February, so many things have happened..
- I received a room in college that suits me perfectly-it's in a quiet corridor, it has air con (massive win!), ensuite and is close to the garage so I can grab my bike and go in the morning.
- the people at college were incredibly friendly from the beginning and have made moving so much easier and I've made so many good friends who are heaps of fun to be around
- O-week at college was amongst the most fun weeks of my life
- I love the city of Adelaide. At first I found it difficult with the traffic (particularly whilst riding) but it has so many parks, is well-laid out and not too big.
- I am enjoying my uni course and making friends there too
- I was offered a spot on the SpecializedWomens-SA cycling team...
and this is where my move to Adelaide really became so very worthwhile.
This offer actually came the day after I had a large conversation with my dad about how much I was struggling in Adelaide to train and he finally convinced me to stay calm, not worry about losing fitness and just swim or ride when I had time for the enjoyment of it. He suggested I was putting myself under too much stress trying to get used to the very active social life that surrounds my college, get used to uni and it's demands-make friends there too, get used to the city as well as try and somehow train.
I had O-week (orientation week at college) off training as planned when I moved here but had spent the last week (being my 2nd week in Adelaide) attempting to train in the dark before uni (my first week of uni ever). I hated it. I had so much trouble getting up to ride by myself in a city that had traffic I couldn't work out and much heavier (even at 5 30 am!) than I was used to, I had no idea where the good rides were, couldn't find any bunches, I continually got lost, google maps became my best friend (but I got over stopping to check it every 5 minutes!), it rained on me, it was windy, I'd finally get to the road I wanted and realise there were no street lights (this happened twice) to which I persevered for about 20 minutes but considering I only overcame my extreme fright for the dark about a year and a half ago I eventually U-turned. Did I mention I don't enjoy training by myself either? all of this put together made getting up early so very, very difficult and even with my enthusiastic positive nature, I had difficulty seeing how I was going to keep it up. Although I hadn't been able to race all Summer as a triathlete due to my foot injury, I trained my ass off because I loved swimming and riding. But this wasn't fun, at all. This is why I had that conversation with my dad. But I guess sometimes life has its funny ways of putting opportunities in your way at just the right time..persevere for long enough and you may just reach it..
Before I left Tasmania, Tom Sawyer had discovered I was moving to Adelaide and put me in contact with Liz Phillipou, the manager/rider of the SpecializedWomens-SA team who he had met on a ride at the Tour Down Under. Liz contacted me and organised to catch up for a ride with a few other girls. On this day, I was expecting to be hammered but instead I was pleasantly surprised to find myself riding on a nice road by the beach with some really nice female cyclists. Embarrassingly enough, I had my corridor party at college the night before which happened to be zombie themed and I still had some remains of the white paint on my face which they assumed to be copious amounts of sun-screen..so I guess from the start I've shown my true daggy colours to these girls and they still accepted me. On this ride Liz introduced me and Carla (now one of my fellow team mates and an absolute legend of a girl!) to the boys in at JT cycles on Anzac Highway. She also told me I'd be welcome to join a bunch of guys the next day and that she'd be there. This was a huge turning point. That night I left town early (which was actually a hard decision for me at the time due to the large amounts of fun I was having with my new friends who I didn't want to be disappointing this early in our friendships) so that I would be decent to ride the next day. I am so glad I did because I rode quite strongly, met some fantastic riders who have now become good friends to me and Liz seemed keen to have me join the team.
When Liz sent me an email saying she was serious about me joining the team, I went into a complete panic. I was torn. Being on the team meant I'd be given (!!) a Specialized S-works sl4 amira which is a top of the line female specific racing bike which is something I could only ever dream about before, racing kit, helmet, glasses, shoes, bike fit-up, awesome networking, opportunities to race around Australia with top domestic female cyclists and team mates. This obviously all sounds amazing but originally I decided in my mind to turn it down. Why? for many reasons. So many reasons in fact, my email to Liz detailing them all was incredibly long. Some of these included:
- not being good enough to race the National Road Series. I told her that I didn't know how much time I'd have to train because uni was my main focus and I'd have to fit in around that and I couldn't see how I was going to have enough time to train enough to be good enough to race the series let alone be competitive for the team
- not having enough/any skills. Let's face it, my lack of skills and confidence is my biggest enemy
- not wanting to let the team down or affect it in any way if I had to pull out mid-season because I couldn't cope with the demand of juggling uni/college and cycling.
- not to mention what I had just discussed with my dad the day before..
I know it hasn't been long, but I haven't looked back.
The 3rd week at Adelaide was a little easier for me to wake up to train considering all that I now had to motivate myself with (I shouldn't lie, I literally kept thinking about how much I needed to show that I deserved that bike and spot on the team..) but it still wasn't fun..but bit by bit, as time passed and I kept persevering, riding in Adelaide has become so much fun, particularly on the weekends! I have had to put myself out there so many times, way out of my comfort zone, but I now have a Wednesday morning hills ride organised, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning bunch rides and I did have a Tuesday night bunch ride but I'm unsure as to the safety of that one now that it is dark..probably the most sketchy bunch to have taken to the streets...and life here is just amazing. So although it was so hard to start with, I was given a massive opportunity at just the right time, took a chance and now find it hard to think of life any differently. The guys and girls I have met and ride with have been nothing short of incredibly wonderful to me. I absolutely love them. They are so much fun and so supportive. When I returned to Launceston for Easter for just two weeks I found it hard to leave them.
At the end of my Easter break I met Liz and Carla in Ulverstone after I had lunch with Roey. All were down for the first leg of the National Road Series, the Mersey Valley Tour. Guess what, so was I. I was so nervous but managed to keep my nerves under control. When we rocked up to the first stage though, the 15 km TT, my nerves and thoughts just went all over the shop. I could see all these people on rollers doing proper warm ups and I had no idea what I was doing. I just wanted to crawl into the van, curl up into a ball and not face the start. But, my move to Adelaide has made me stronger than that and I realised that I had been continually putting myself out of my comfort zone for 8 weeks so I sorted my head out and did the sort of warm up I would for triathlon (minus having a swim, which I did miss). As a triathlete for 7 years, I have heaps of time trialing experience..but that's coming out of the water! not doing a warm up on rollers, getting to the start line and being held thinking that as soon as they let go of me I would fall straight off onto the road (I was 90% sure this was going to happen). The people at the start line were awesome to me and talked me through what I had to do. Still, it was only with 10 seconds to go that I changed my mind set from "I'm about to hit the deck" to "let's do this, you can do it". When they let go and I didn't hit the deck, sheer relief flooded me and I was away. This is where I learnt that doing a really decent warm up is very important. The whole way out I felt shocking. The way back was better but I was fairly disappointed with my time. I need to adjust my mind to realise that I do not have to run afterwards and have to go ALL OUT. Next time, I'll focus on adjusting my warm up too.
If I thought I was nervous for the TT, then I hit new- found levels that afternoon for the road race. Although warming up wasn't as much of an issue as the race started off in neutral, I was petrified of racing 58 other girls. Liz told me to keep focusing on working my way to the front but having found myself at the back at the start, I looked up the road and saw absolutely no possible way to move towards the front without crossing the middle line. I got dropped up the QOM but thanks to a few other strong girls such as Georgia Baker who won the TT earlier also getting dropped, I received a tow back to the bunch where I stayed until the descent. I lost probably a minute and an awful lot of places on the descent which was to be expected as I am only just starting to get better at the technical side of cycling (slow work in progress) and so started the final 6 km climb at the back of the main bunch. I was slowly working my way through to mid-field but with 2 km to go found myself, and particularly my back and abs, in a world of pain and crawled to the end. I was stoked with how strong I felt and very happy to be there until the descent. I learnt heaps and was less scared for stage 3. This stage was 58 km which was 18 km more than I had ever raced before (having only done a handful of U/17 races in 2008 and 2009). Stage 3 was an additional 31 km on top of this..
I was no longer so scared about not knowing what to expect while racing due to having completed the day before but I knew what the course was like as I had ridden it previously in training and knew I was in for a tough day. Funnily enough, the climb up to Weegena was where my first ever road race went back in 2008. On that day, I got off my bike and walked 3 times as I had panic attacks. Fair to say, I was glad 4 years had passed since and found the climb, my mentality and my physical strength a lot better! Stage 3 was raced so differently to Stage 2 which was great for my learning, I really was gaining a lot of experience out of this tour which is exactly what I wanted. The group stayed together until the turn off to Weegena. As I had badly positioned myself at the back, I found it very difficult to overtake the stragglers as the group were all over the road and I'm not very confident to get too close and take gaps. This led to me being in the 3rd group that formed and we pushed hard the entire lap to get back to the first two groups (who also reformed). This meant a lot of pace lining and by the time we caught up to the leading bunch, it was time to do the loop and all that climbing again. Once again, I found myself at the back and as a result also got dropped. I kept calm and timed my legs well to catch up to my earlier group that had dropped again up QOM but my recovery was probably 10 seconds too slow and they went up the road while I lagged, suffering from a lack of racing kms and nutrition. I worked with another girl for a while but she dropped behind me which was disappointing. I knew I had 40 km to go which is a fairly epic TT particularly in the torrential rain we had but I was setting a decent pace for a while but just couldn't close the gap I had let form. Eventually I caught another girl and I let her sit on me for a while, then we took turns for a bit until 20 km to go where she was totally over it and I had majorly hunger flatted. We then soft pedaled most of the way back and had a good chat. It was funny how soft pedaling seemed like the most effort we could put in. Up the final climb to Sheffield she showed it clearly wasn't for her and she disappeared up ahead. I caught a couple of guys and rode into Sheffield with them and I'm not sure who of us was more excited to see the finish line but I know I had a massive grin on my face. I had made it! I finished the tour. A gruelling 162 km in terrible weather conditions.
Over the weekend I learnt so much but the easiest things I know I can improve on are warming up and nutrition. My nutrition was atrocious. All I had to get me through on Sunday was 3 little lollies. I had gels but I couldn't reach them as I put my sunglasses on top of them and wasn't confident to take both hands off my bars in the wet. I also had more of the little lolly things but they got wet and were stuck at the bottom of the packet out of my reach. In training now, I know I need to focus on this as I know I can easily prevent my body from a lot of suffering and a far better result.
This account was just the racing side of the tour. The social side, staying with my team mates Carla and Liz and her husband Mic was just awesome fun and they were a massive support. Liz told me in her original email to me that joining a team like this would make moving to Adelaide better for me as I wasn't just moving for uni, I would be creating a life here. I have found that to be so very true. I have a lot to thank Liz for!! and Tom Sawyer for putting us in contact and for putting good words in for me. It was also so fantastic to see so many Tasmanians support me over the weekend, this was greatly appreciated! It definitely helped me to keep pedaling hard.
The last two days I have just been trying to recover and settle back into college and face the reality of uni. This weekend I will be racing in the Alphutte classic which is a handicap race at the Range and the next weekend after that I will be joining Carla, Liz, Stacey and Kimberley (and our super swanny Mic) for the second round of the national road series, Battle on the Border. This race has a 6.7 km TT, an 85 km road race, a 98 km road race and a criterium. This will be the first criterium I have ever raced in and again I am extremely nervous as I have trouble turning corners. But, I'll continue learning and take the good with the bad. I'm extremely excited and motivated and will just see where cycling takes me.
I find myself wondering how on earth I deserved and managed to have so many good things happen to me this year but deep down, I know that I probably do deserve these opportunities as I've faced my fair share of hardship and it's probably about time I did something for myself and really took a chance. Thank you so much to all those people who have supported me, encouraged me, believed in me, been a friend to me, loved me and given me amazing opportunities. I hope one day I can re-pay you all in my own way.
:)
