June 28, 2010 - The Candian contingent of the Webcor team, Erinne and Joelle, raced their national championship road race yesterday. It was a great day for the team - for the 3rd time, Erinne helped a Webcor teammate win the coveted Maple Leaf jersey!

This year the Canadian National Championships were held in Edmonton, Alberta which is a town up north and along a river valley.  Therefore the course which we did 9 laps of, had a loop around the city park and then we went up the river valley hill 3 times at 3 different locations with 180 degree turns at the top to take us straight back down.  It was a good little course; the loop around the park was flat, the first hill was steeper and 1 minute long, the second and third climbs were more gradual and about 2 minutes long.

The Webcor team consisted of Joelle and I (Erinne) and our super staff Jeremy!  (Also, my husband Tony flew out last minute and was riding around cheering J )

The big teams or competition were Tara Whitten, the Futuroscope team which held Julie Beveridge, Anne Samplonius, Nanoblur, Total Restoration, Cascades and the Ontario and BC teams.

Off the start line Lex Albrecht from Cascades rolled off the front and once she noticed she had a gap she started a solo break.  She eventually got 3.5 minutes and was going really strong for 5 laps.  On the 6 and 7 lap she started to lose time and only got caught with 2.5 laps to go.  During that time, there were several attacks that were intermittent but nobody put down a team chase and nobody kept the attacks going.  The course was hard, but unfortunately every hill was short and had a descent immediately after that also descended the same road.  Therefore, nobody was getting away or out of sight.

I threw in 2 big attacks about half way through the race, but I didn’t have the legs today to break it apart and nobody seemed too interested in keeping moves going.  I guess everyone thought they would be sprinters....  Anyhow, we could tell pretty early that it was going to be a sprint finish and with 3 laps to go I focused my efforts on keeping the field together or only working in moves that made the major competition chase me.  Joelle was able to mostly rest for the last 3 laps except for once when she covered a hard counter from something that I had been in.   She did a great job of being attentive and patient.  On the last lap up the second of the three climbs, Anne and Tara put in the last attack.  I chased them back on the descent and then kept an easy pace up 3/4 of the final climb.   Then a BC Team girl took over at the front and I decided to attack up and over the overpass and into the final descent.  I was hoping this would make Tara or the BC Team chase me.  Julie bridge bridged up to me and by the bottom of the descent we were caught. 

At this point we were just out of 1 km to go so I decided to stay at the front and put my head down for as long as I could.  I didn’t want the group to bunch up again and I knew behind me that Joelle was more than capable of finding her own position and we wanted to keep the finish fast and safe.  I took the group to about 6 or 7 hundred metres to go and when I was done at the front, a BC team rider, Steph Rhorda took over the leadout ( for Alison Testeroete).  Guess who was on her wheel though?  Yes Joelle!!!  It was really perfect.  Steph took them around the last corner to about 250meters to go and then Joelle started her sprint and never let up and even had a gap by the finish.  Arms up!!! Canadian Champ!!! Yippeee!!!!

Joelle was ecstatic!  The only bummer was that Joelle is very bad at urinating on demand... yes she took hours in the doping control and was the last one to finally get enough millilitres.  I officially say she failed that part of the day!   The only good part of it was the fact that we didn’t have time to eat so when we got to the airport we had a big feast of burgers and fries!!! mmmmmm

Print | posted on Monday, June 28, 2010 12:00 AM