Genevieve Whitson Elite Road Cyclist

I went into the Tour of Fitchburg wanting a top 20 finish on GC and missed out by 50 seconds, finishing 26th and just outside the overall GC for prize money. I'm dissapointed but I gave it everything I had and I just wasn't quite fast enough..
I raced this tour in 2008 and the numbers and depth of the riders were definitely up this year. 89 women started the tour with strong teams such as Colavita dominating every stage and it made for four really good, solid days of racing.

Fitchburg as a town has always intrigued me. It's the only place i've been where a GPS has problems finding the destination and seems to be a labyrinth of streets juxtaposed across each other amongst some very hilly terrain. Apparently it is the second hilliest city in the USA next to San Francisco and I am starting to think there is some truth in that. Riding back to our host accommodation's house our team worried that we were wrecking our legs for all the stages with the amount of short killer hills in the space of a 1 mile ride!

Fitchburg is entrenched with beautiful 3-4 story villa houses everywhere. A lot of them are in desparate need of repair but they are all stunning. Phil Demartino who hosted our team gave us a tour of the city on the last night. I wanted to buy every second house I saw. On the note of host accommodation I am pretty confident that we had the best host in town. Phil takes hosting to a whole new level (Phil you have set the bar very high) - he made us up our own keys so that we could come and go whenever we wanted, cooked us a BBQ for the 4th of July as well as providing firework views from his porch, gave us a tour of the city and even showed me a truly haunted house on the outskirts of the city on Saturday night. The house was HUGE and looked like it had been plucked right out of France. There was a really sad story attached to the history of the house and it definitely had a very heavy energy looming inside as we walked though room after room after room - a real shame really as it would of been an amazing place filled with kids running around everywhere. Phil and I joked about how many teams you could host for the tour with it's size and capacity.

So we started the tour with a circuit race in down town Fitchburg. I always find the first day of a tour to be a bit of an opener for my legs, and I placed 29th. I seem to take a few days to get my engine moving. Colavita took control of the race from the start, lining up their sprinters/hill climbers every lap and set Catherine Cheatley up well for the win. It was pretty hot out there and that was when concerns started for the nature of the road race on Saturday.

The road race was 96km around the Wachusett mountain, finishing with a steep 1km climb into the town of princeton center. I must of mentally blocked out all of the hills in the race from 2008 because when we approached the start of the 5km climb to the finish of the first lap I was thinking 'I don't remember it feeling this hard'. The pace was more aggressive this year. Going into the start of lap 3 a break went off the front of the final climb though princeton with 6 riders and NZ cyclists Catherine and Rushlee driving the pace. I managed to make the break (I absolutely destroyed my legs in doing so) and got very excited at the prospect of it holding and then the thought of a top ten finish, but we had some really bad luck getting neutralised by the lead car to let the pro men pass us and after a couple of minutes the chasing pack caught us. I knew that I done some damage getting into that break as I started feeling pretty weak as the temperature kept rising (33 degrees) and by the 5th lap I was in survival mode to stay with the front group that had dropped down to 40 riders. My team mate Natalie rode up to me going into the sixth lap asking me how I was feeling and all I could manage in between heavy breathing was 'not good....'. It felt like the sun had decided to purposely focus it's hot rays especially on me - I literally felt like I was cooking from the inside and would spontaneously combust any second. By the sixth lap Rushlee, Catherine and Bron Ryan had substained a 3 women break away and had a 1.45 on main group. It was going to come down to a mass bunch sprint for 4th place onwards but I knew I was not in any form to contend for this. I was too busy telling my body and legs that they had to hang on no matter how bad the pain got and that falling off the back of the pack was never an option (although rather tempting when one is feeling this terrrible). With the '500 metres' to go sign things reeved up and I was no where to be seen, trailing in at the very end of the pack in 36th place wrecked and very frustated to loose the plot so badly in a race. Natalie rode a really good race for her first time in the pro 1/2 at Fitchburg and came in 2.5 minutes behind our group. I thought she looked a lot better than I did in the race. She certainly seemed in more control of things than I was feeling.

So after the intensity of the road race I had to shave some time off in the time trail to bring my overall GC down. I was very fortunate to have a time trial bike to use for the 14.6 km course and if you have never used a time trial bike before I can tell you that they make a massive difference. On a standard bike over this sort of distance on a undulating course I can only average around 38.5kmph, but with the time trial bike I managed to sit just under 40kmph and bumped myself up a couple of notches on GC. Most of the girls racing had time trial bikes and I felt sorry for the women that didn't as it was a big advantage. Natalie has massive engine on her. She had to do the time trial on a standard bike which the officials had to adjust to make it legal (bikes were subject to official UCI checks) and came in only 50 seconds behind me. I pretty sure she would of beaten me on a time trial bike. Another NZ rider took out of the podium for this stage (Alison Shanks). Alison is the 2009 3000 metre world pursuit champion so I wasn't really surprised to hear that she had won it.

The final stage of the tour is always the criterium that is held along the main streets of Fitchburg. All the locals come out and a lot of bars and cafes have deals going to attract more spectators and the atmosphere is always really fun. However the temperature on Monday was UNBEARABLE. It was 98 degrees farenheit (37 degrees) and I can only thank my lucky stars that the heat didn't fly that high in the road race. It was by far the most uncomfortable conditions I have ever raced in and I sensed that the feeling was mutual amongst the entire peloton. Just spinning around the course warming up my energy felt totally zapped, drinking from my bottles it was like a warm cup of of tea. It was pretty revolting.

We had 28 laps to complete with sprint primes on lap 25, 20, 15, 10, 7, 5, 3. Despite the heat it started fast and I got an awesome position for the first sprint prime finishing 2nd to Kelly Benjamin. Kelly held on to the sprint jersey for the entire tour with the help of her Colavita team mates and is a bit of legend at Fitchburg for her winning sprint form. One of my mentors (Amy Taylor, Kinetic Edge www.kecycling.com) told me a few years ago that 90% of sprinting comes down to positioning and at the time because I was never placing in sprints I didn't understand this but she is right. Obvioulsy you do have to have some type of kick in your legs, but if you're 2nd or 3rd wheel going into the last corner in a criterium you have every chance of winning as you're not having to climb up the pack like all the riders behind you wasting energy.

Attacks were made fairly consistently in the criterium but a lot of women looked like they were just focusing on staying hydrated. I saw riders holding one hand on the bar while cornering and pouring water all over their helmets, faces, shirts. The organisers also estalished a new rule this year stating that any riders that were dropped before the 14th lap would not count for overall GC so there was a fair bit of commotion going on as everyone fought it out to stay in the race. I didn't get lined up perfectly for the finish but with 70 riders contending the stage I was happy to place 17th. Erica Allar won, with Kelly Benjamin in 2nd place followed by Olivia Dillon.

So overall placings for the kiwis are as follows. Talk about kiwi domination for the top 4 places..

Cath Cheatley - 1st
Rushlee Buchanan - 2nd
Alison Shanks - 4th
Me - 26th

What was also really cool was to see all the kiwi girls on the overall sprints points classification:

Cath Cheatley - 2nd
Alison Shanks - 7th
Rushlee Buchanan- 13th
Me - 18th

You can check out full results here: http://www.longsjo.com/Results.html

So the legs are tired and definitely need a few days to recover. The heatwave continues and it has been difficult to sleep at night even with aircon on. My scottish, norwegian heritage is really showing through now. I seem to have a lower tolerance for the heat. I can race in the cold for hours ...

I really want to come back at race Fitchburg again next year but there is major concern that it could fold completely due to the difficult finanical climate at the moment and the struggle for the organisers to find sponsors. This would be a huge tragedy to loose such a classic and well respected race. It's part of the USA National Calandar and is one of the oldest races in the country. It's now in it's 51st year and it would be a massive blow to the cycling community here in the States and Fitchburg if this fell off the bandwagon. You can read more about this and maybe see how you can help to try and keep it alive on this website http://fitchburgbikerace.blogspot.com/

I have to thank the following people for all their help over the last 4 days:

Natalie, Wayne and Geoff - Transport, directions, great team mates to have in any race.
Todd, Scott and Team MVP crew - For all the positive encouragament and support.
Phil Demartino - Amazing host accommodation and entertainment!
Ed Collier and Organisers - For hosting such a great tour. Fitchburg has always been my favourite international tour and I cross my fingers that is still running again next year.

It may be a few quiet weeks on the racing calendar now so I will hopefully get the chance to get some actual structure going on with my training and I may even start thinking about the plan of attack for the cyclocross season starting in September.