The 4th annual Battle on the Border cycling festival was held last weekend May 5 - 7 at the magnificent Tweed Coast, Northern New South Wales.
After finishing packing and a few last minute tune ups to my bike on Friday, Andrew and I took off on our mini road trip to Salt near Kingscliff. We arrived around 3pm at the Mantra, a beautiful 4.5 star resort at Salt Beach. We were booked into a magnificent three bedroom apartment with every creature comfort imaginable. The weekend was looking good!
After a brief exploration of the resort I met up with Nicole (my former training buddy and roomie for the weekend) and we proceeded to registration and rider briefing shortly after. We were warned of perilous country roads, rough pothole filled surfaces and unsealed roads as flooding had wreaked havoc on the area the week prior. We were also warned not to cross any double lines and to strictly adhere to the road rules, as we were only to have “rolling” road closures and traffic would still be coming from the opposite direction. Good to know.
Then it was back to the room to have a nice pasta dinner courtesy of my very own chef Andrew. After triple checking my time trial starting time it was off to bed.
My nerves prevented me from having a great night sleep and I woke up before the alarm had the chance to do its job. I managed to eat some breakfast while the sun came up to reveal a beautiful blue sky day. Perfect conditions for racing.
This year was the first time Battle on the Border would include the Women’s NRS. This meant a large and very talented women’s field would be racing, including Jayco/Apollo VIS rider Lisa Jacobs (last month’s Womens NRS Mersey Valley Tour winner), 2010 National RR Champion Ruth Corset (Pensar-Hawk Racing) making a comeback and other big names such as Rebecca Wiasak (Suzuki-Trek) and Jodie Willet (Pensar-Hawk Racing), the latter recently returning from a stint overseas competing in the MTB XC World Cup. No biggie.
The first stage of Battle on the Border as mentioned earlier was a 7.2k TT loop starting and finishing at the Murwillumbah Showgrounds (don’t try to pronounce it). My starting time was 8:37am. Since I don’t own a time trial bike or even a set of clip-on TT bars it was going to be a bit of an uphill battle (even tough it was mostly flat). I was lucky though, there was hardly any wind! After a decent warm-up my nerves had subsided somewhat as I rolled to the start. I felt a little inadequate lining up next to these professional looking girls with their awesome TT gear. A clock counted down from 30 seconds to 0 and I was off! I was a little nervous as I hadn’t been able to ride the course beforehand. As a result I slowed down a little too much in the corners. Once out of the town I was able to find my legs and go as hard as I could. I tried to sit at 95% of my max HR, never a pleasant experience. When I crossed the finish line and stopped my Garmin I knew I had done ok. A few minutes later I received a text message from Battle on the Border advising me of my time of 11:37:08, placing me in the middle of the pack with an average speed of 37.1kph. Considering the lack of TT equipment I was satisfied.
11am was the start of the 97km road race, once again starting at the Murwillumbah Showgrounds. I got increasingly nervous at the prospect of having to race with 67 women on narrow country roads. I was a bit late lining up and started at the back of the bunch. It was a bit of a struggle making my way closer to the front once the race had started. A few girls were trying to move up by going along the outside of bunch and crossing the double lines, causing me to have visions of girls smashing head on into cars coming the other way. A few traffic cones were lined up to mark the middle of the road in one section which almost caused a big pile up right in front of me. A nice heart starter! The roads proved to be very narrow indeed, with the occasional pothole and gravel to spice things up a bit. Girls kept crossing the double lines to make up a few places in bunch and frequent panicked “CAR UP!” yells were the order of the day. After about 18km we reached the bottom of the first hill which didn’t cause any major upsets to the bunch. On the bottom of the second hill I dropped my chain. This happens quite a bit and I can normally get it back on without having to get off the bike. Not this time though. I jumped off and tried to put it back on as the bunch continued up the hill towards the KOM without me! Luckily the neutral support car came to my rescue shortly after. Thanks guys. Now I was in for an almighty chase up a 9% gradient hill back to the bunch. Yay!
As I was grinding my way to the top I was encouraged by the nice fellows in the Pensar-Hawk Racing team car, which was great. I passed a bunch of girls who had been dropped by the main bunch. At 98% of my max HR I reached the KOM. A few other girls were right behind me as we descended at break neck speeds. One girl of the Suzuki-Trek team had the right idea as she passed us at lightning speeds on the flat behind her team car. Dammit.
After chasing the bunch for what seemed like forever I finally managed to hook back in. What a relief! I was happy the bunch seemed to be rolling at a comfortable speed as I was trying to recover. I even started to enjoy myself a little, taking in the scenery and the lovely warm weather. I focused on getting to the front a bit more as we snaked through the country side. At the 48km mark we passed the start/finish to embark on our second lap. As we approached the hills for the second time I prayed to the bike gods my chain would stay on this time and luckily it did. I made up quite a few places as I climbed my way towards the KOM, which gave me a bit of much needed confidence.
The rest of the race proved to be fairly uneventful until we hit another small climb. The sudden change in pace and riders getting out of the saddle to climb causes the bike to temporarily drop back a little and if the rider behind you is following too closely it can cause a touch of wheels, likely to result in a crash. This is exactly what happened to a few girls to the right of me. A blood curdling scream preceded the awful sound of carbon hitting the tarmac. Ouch.
As the peloton continued to make its way to the finish the pace picked up a little. I was readying myself for a slightly technical finish as the final kilometres would lead us through the town of Murwillumbah with plenty of tight corners and bad road conditions. But then, with roughly 3 kilometers to go, a rider came down right in front of me with little warning. All I could do was brake as hard as I could without going over the bars and hope for the best. I landed on top of her and after a few seconds realised I hadn’t broken anything, checked if the other rider was ok, grabbed my bike and put in an almighty chase to catch the bunch… for the second time! I think it was the adrenalin that allowed me to ride through the discomfort and the anger of crashing so close to the finish that made me ride my lungs out! I managed to cross the finish line 21 seconds down on the main bunch - 36th. At first I felt some relief, but then more anger. I think I swore a few times as I made my way back to the car and I then took some more of my anger out on my water bottle… not my finest moment. (The water bottle is ok, in case you are wondering).
After making my way back to the resort, suffering through an ice bath and having a great feed at Sea Salt (delicious pizza!) I wasn’t feeling too bad and thought I would be ok to race the next day. Unfortunately, the next day I was feeling considerably worse. My elbow was pretty swollen and very sore. I also discovered a beautiful bruise on my chest from where the handlebars must have hit me. I decided to abandon the race. It wasn’t an easy decision, but the thought of suffering through another 2 stages feeling like I was, wasn’t really doing it for me. So I decided to leave paradise a day early, disappointed but also happy I had the opportunity to race with some awesome athletes I have been looking up to and finding out I am able to keep up with them without too much trouble. I have come a pretty long way since my first ever bike race less than a year ago.
Next up is round 1 of the SEQ MTB Series at Mount Crosby on Sunday May 13! That’s right, MTB! Should be interesting!
Tune ups by my personal mechanic Andrew
Mantra on Salt Beach
Lovely Murwillumbah
Warm Up
Signing on
TT Take Off
Race Number
Riders line up at the start
Race winner Ruth Corset
Salt Beach, so beautiful! Hope to be back next year!
p.s. A big thank you to my coach Adrian Booth for his continued support and to the wonderful physios at Revive Ashgrove for keeping me from falling apart.
