Montréal Coupe du Monde (World Cup) 2002

The world cup in Montréal was not a good race for me, due mainly to a disruption to my training in the lead up to the race. About 10 days before the race, I woke up with a very tight left piriformis (gluteal muscle). I diagnosed it as being attributable to 4 hard days of training and decided to back off things off for a day. However, the pain in the whole area intensified and I ended up taking 2 complete days off the bike, hoping I hadn't strained anything. I stretched the area often and frantically rang around looking for a masseur who may want to work over the Memorial Day weekend.

I wisely decided against racing both the Boundbrook criterium on the Sunday and the Somerville criterium on the Monday. Instead, I bared my bottom to a masseur who did a great job in getting rid of the tightness. I took the next 2 days easy and so after practically 5 days off the bike, I did my first solid training session on Wednesday, only 3 days before the Montréal World Cup - I was seriously under down.

We drove to Montréal on Thursday and then headed out into light drizzle on Friday to ride the course. Of course, we were at the far end of the circuit when the heavens opened up and we returned to our accommodation at McGill university looking like drowned rats. I rode the rollers for another hour completing some sub-threshold intervals to get my legs going.

The 8km course was held over very broken and damaged bitumen (ie. pavement for those living outside of Australia), and was quite technical with a number of sharp off camber turns. Each lap started with a 1km fast descent and finished with a brutal 2km wall, which steepened to about 18 percent in parts. There was a strong crosswind for most of the climb followed by a 20 km/hr headwind over the top of the wall.

Today I struggled from the very first pedal stroke - not once did I feel strong or even average. My legs felt so heavy and dead and it was just 'one of those days'. The first lap was chaotic as it became a race to get to the bottom of the hill first. As predicted, the peloton split to pieces on the first ascent. I ended up in the 2nd group and already 1 minute down on the front group. With each lap we continued to lose about 1 minute and it was obvious that we were completely out of the race and in danger of being time cut. My legs continued to feel lousy and so I decided to call it a day after 7 laps. I went back to the team car, cooled down on the rollers and watched the remainder of the race from the rollers.

Erinne rode strongly and only lost contact with the front group in the last lap or so. Yvonne also called it a day part way through while Petra, Ann Marie and Hiroko all finished within the time limit. Dede Demet Murray (Talgo America) won the world cup, with Anna Millward (Saturn) coming home 2nd and Genevieve Jeanson (RONA) taking the last podium position.

So this world cup was really a non-event for me. It was a tough day and after so many days off the bike I just didn't feel 100%. Someone very close to me has taught me that cycling can be likened to a game of tennis - it is made up of serves, points, games, matches and sets and I've decided that today was just a double fault. Oh well, c'est la vie.

We have one day to rest and then we race the Tour of Greater Montréal.