Battle of Buninyong

January 2012

Rising star of Australian cycling Shara Gillow blogs about playing her part in GreenEDGE – AIS win at the Mars Cycling Australia Road Cycling Championships

Going into the Mars Cycling Australia Road National Championships, everyone in the GreenEDGE-AIS team was confident of that someone in our team would be heading home a winner in the green and gold hoops.

As it happened my teammate Amanda Spratt did the business, attacking on the third last of 10 laps up and down the challenging 10.2km Buninyong course to win with the time of 2h55:22. After a tough few years with a debilitating back injury, Spratty has worked so hard to get back and we couldn’t be prouder to see her take the national title.

I had a solid ride in the Women’s Road Race, officially crossing the line with the peloton 1m30 behind Amanda.

There was much talk about the strength of the GreenEDGE team in the men’s race but the girls didn’t disappoint heading in with a very, very strong line up.

We really couldn’t be enjoying a better start to the season at GreenEDGE-AIS, and christening this fledgling team beautifully. We’re racing well together, and listening to one another and really backing each other up.

There’s been a bit of cheeky chatter about in the twitterverse that GreenEDGE-AIS and Jayco-AIS are riding as one ‘super team’. I can tell you that’s just not right. Sure, there’s a synergy there, we all know each other, but we are most definitely two teams. We have separate team meetings, we ride for our teammates, and our teammates only, simple as that.

When Spratty attacked on Saturday we backed her 100 per cent. Tiffany Cromwell went a little bit later, on the second last lap, and from there it was my job — along with my teammates — to then hang at the front of the peloton and let Spratty do her thing.

There were three or four riders in our team that were capable of challenging for the green and gold hoops, so we hadn’t formulated a plan for any of us specifically.

Getting the first win for the GreenEDGE name at the Jayco Bay Crits was awesome – there was lots of media there. After the road race the bar was set with the girls outpacing the GreenEDGE boys, so expectations were high for their turn on Sunday! All jokes aside, we’re loving it. We’re getting some really positive media attention (thanks Subaru for making the live coverage on Sunday possible for first time ever) and it’s good for our team, but also for women’s cycling in general.

Now that the road race is done, my thoughts are totally on Tuesday’s Time Trial at Learmonth. It’s a bit cliché but I take my riding one-day at a time and race to the best of my abilities for each race. For the road race that meant doing what was best for the team.

My confidence is certainly high for Tuesday’s Time Trial and while we enjoyed a little celebration, we were pretty much in bed by 9.30pm — which is a bit sad considering it was a Saturday night! As always, the following day is all about recovery for me, but I do love time trials and am really excited about the hit out. Bring on Learmonth!