Genevieve Whitson Elite Road Cyclist

On Sunday at 5.45am Natalie and I hit the road to drive up to Canada for the K-W Classic road race in Kitchener. Early mornings can be a bit of struggle for me but the prospect of seeing the Niagara Falls was incentive on top of the race. After experiencing some pretty nice weather here in Rochester it was really chilly by the time we hit Canada and I ended up riding with arm warmers on which I never thought would happen in June.

The K-W Classic is a regional race in Canada and although the field was a bit small (21 riders), some very strong women turned up to mix things up including Merrell Collins who took out 3rd place at the Canadian road nationals last year. Merrell was by far the strongest women in the race, powering up the hills ahead of the majority of riders and she won the race fair and square. She also did more work than anyone else so full credit has to go out to her.

It was a sprinters course, with only one 400 meter climb every lap. The course was only about 4km long so they just cranked up the laps and we ended up riding around about 16 times. One advantage to this type of race is that you get to know the course extremely well and it definitely set me up well for the bunch sprint finish as I knew the 'good' and the 'bad' places to be positioned. Merrell and I got a brief break on the rest of the peloton about half way into the race going up the climb, but it seemed impossible to actually stay away from the group and after several failed attempts I resigned myself to the fact that it was going to come down to a sprint finish in the rain, which is always a bit dicey. Natalie and I had also discussed some team tactics before the race, but we could both see by the last quarter that this just wasn't a course where things were going to play out like we had planned.

So it came down to long drawn out sprint. I was about 6th wheel going into the sprint and watched a lot of the riders on the right hand side get boxed into the gutter coming into the last corner (Bad luck to Natalie who got caught up in this). I think I jumped just a fraction too late in the last 500 meters as I missed 3rd place by a tiny margin. I was a bit gutted as I was just outside the prize money but it was still great to make the podium...or so I thought. After the race I was told to head to prize giving as the top five were getting presented, but when I got there all kitted up in our team sponsors gear they decided to only present to the top three. I felt a tad silly but was relieved to get out of the cold as my hands had lost feeling and were looking ghostly white.. as I said earlier, it really was COLD in Canada.

Driving back to Rochester Natalie made sure we took the border entrance with the fantastic view of the Niagara Falls. WOW. Incredible. Natalie then scared me with stories of people who have gone over the Niagara Falls in barrels and survived. I was looking at all the water gushing down and just thinking how completely crazy that is. There just looks like too much water for anyone to be able to live through that - but don't worry I certainly won't be testing that theory..

The tour of Fitchburg was suppose to be our next tour for the team, but we are now heading to America's Tour of Diaryland in Wisconsin for 7 days of Criterium racing and then on to Fitchburg. Criterium racing is FULL ON and this is going to be a great place to practice sprinting and positioning over and over again.

Massive thanks to Natalie for driving me up to Canada for the race - always exciting to get another stamp on the passport.