Lauren Perry - The Road Ahead

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Category: Lauren Perry

My training at the moment is not very hard as I am taking this year quite slowly due to the main events I want good results in being at the end of the year, and beginning of next year.
Rides have been between 30 and 60km, although I have done a 90km ride, and a 110km ride recently. I need to work on my hill climbing and maybe my sprints as I am lacking a bit of speed.

I have recovery days on Mondays and Fridays, where I ride about 30km nice and easy at a steady pace, but I find eating well, drinking plenty and sleeping plays a big role in how you recover.

I have set goals for the rest of the year and next year to get good results in the Canberra Tour, Road Nationals, and the National Omnium Championships later this year. From these events I hope to perform well in order to be looked at by selectors for the junior world’s team to represent Australia at the junior world titles next year. I know this will be very hard to achieve, but I am willing to give it everything to make it happen.

The last major events I’ve competed in were the national junior track titles in mid March, and the national junior hill climbing championships at the beginning of April. I had my ups and downs at these events, but learnt from my experiences. I went to track nationals with goals to win the Teams Pursuit (with team members Macey Stewart and Rowena Badcock) and break the Aussie record, to make at least the bronze medal ride off in the individual pursuit, to qualify top 5 in the sprint, and top 3 (preferably win) the scratch race.

We arrived in Melbourne 2 days before the racing started, and had 2 track sessions. Our team pursuit was looking really good with us riding 2 seconds under record time, and doing it what felt to us as easy. We spent the next day riding tempo, and focusing on the small things that count, such as swinging up at the right time, talking to each other when we began to struggle, and riding on the right line of the track. After all this, we were feeling rather confident. However, my week couldn’t have started any worse! I rode the 500m time trial as a heart starter for the team pursuit (TP) and didn’t expect any results, which didn’t happen anyway. I may have finished top 10 or 15. Then the moment we had been waiting for! The team pursuit qualifying in which we wanted to prove to Australia we were the best, we knew we could do it, as we had in training, and had nothing holding us back. We stared the race steadily and were riding smooth. We were 3 seconds under the Australian record time splits and improving. Then one of the worst possible scenarios happened. Rowena hit a wheel and lost contact with myself and Macey. It was a horrible feeling to know we were so close to gold, yet one tiny mistake cost us the whole race. We didn’t even make a bronze ride off! After the cool down it was time to refocus. I found it difficult as the TP was the only event I had specifically trained for and to see it slip away as it did that night was pretty hard! From that I have learnt it was a team effort, and I had no control in what the other girls did. We were all bitterly disappointed, but moved on to focus on the next 3 days of racing.

The next day I was the only one of our three man team to race. I had the sprint rounds, and after the previous night all I wanted to do was get a medal! I qualified 3^rd in the 200 metre sprint with a time of 12.6 seconds, this was a personal best time for me. I then had ride offs in which I won a few of, but not enough to progress through to the medal ride offs. This made me angry again, because my medal hopes were now looking rather slim. I knew the racing would be hard against the sprinters, as this is the event they specialize in, and soon realized not to be too disappointed with my ride, because I had ridden against the best sprinters in Australia and came out with a 5^th place.

I once again refocused for the next day which was the individual pursuit qualifying. I have previously been Australian champion in this event (2010), but since then I have struggled to maintain such reputation. I struggled to be in the top 5 girls last year, and leading up to nationals my times were nothing glamorous at all! I had been riding times of 2 minutes 39, and some days 2 minutes 43. These were not the sort of times I wanted to be doing. When it came to nationals Josie Talbot was the one to beat, she had ridden really well last year claiming silver in the event, and her time was only improving. Macey Stewart had shown at state titles, she would be a tough contender, and these were the girls I was looking out for, as well as many other riders from Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales in particularly. So once again I turned my attention to the individual pursuit ride off, this is when I usually forget about what has happened in the previous days, but in the back of my mind all I could think of was losing the gold in the TP and how bad I wanted a medal. I rode off ranked 4^th against Josie, and expected to be beaten but gave it my all. I rode a time of 2:34 which I had never done before, it was a huge PB! This made me number one ranked rider until the next ride off when Macey came out to beat it only by a thousandth of a second. This put Macey and I in the gold medal ride off later that night. It was such a good feeling to know I had secured a medal, and could possibly make it gold.

A short while later Macey and I rode the team sprint qualifying, in which we didn’t expect much, being endurance riders, and mixing it with the sprinters. We had not ridden this event since last year, in which we came 5^th. We were ranked as the slowest team, but this didn’t stop us! We managed to hold on to third in the qualifying to ride off for the bronze medal.

I then went out to race against Macey for the gold in the final of the individual pursuit. After one of the toughest races I’ve ridden, Macey took gold and I got the silver, only by 0.03 of a second. This time I was not nearly as disappointed, the gold medal had gone to my team mate, and I had finally got the medal I wanted!

We then got on the rollers for about 10-15 minutes which was the cool down from out individual pursuit, and at the same time, the warm up for our team sprint. Our rivals were doing a normal warm up which was quite intimidating at the time as we were only rolling our legs over, and they looked ready to race! It was quite hard to refocus on the team sprint after what we had just done, but we managed to do it and secured ourselves another medal within the space of 20 minutes.

From then on I started becoming fatigued, I didn’t have the speed I usually had in scratch races, and this was the race I had the next day. I wanted to win the scratch race this year, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. I knew it was going to be difficult, and I think that’s why I wasn’t too disappointed on the result. I got a bronze medal, which is still a great achievement when riding with the best girls in Australia. That wrapped up my week of racing nationals in Victoria, and I was pleased with my final results. I had learnt from my experiences, came home with medals, and achieved most of my goals.

2 weeks after this event I found myself back in Victoria riding another national title race, Mount Buffalo Hill Climbing Championships. I don’t class myself as a hill climber, or a time trialist, but I won a silver medal in an event which combines the two, time trialling and hill climbing. I was pleased with this result as I hadn’t been feeling too good prior to the event, but managed to be successful. The next day I had the road race which was a ride straight up Mt. Buffalo to the top, which was about 26km. I again placed second in this race. I was pleased with my medals as I did not expect silver!

Since then I have gained a Tasmanian Institute of Sport scholarship, and I am now coached by Gene Bates, instead of my coach of six years and dad, Jamie Perry. I can’t thank dad enough for what he has done for me, he taught me to ride a bike, the skills that come with it, and has coached me to 17 national medals including 3 Australian titles. I am also looking forward to working with Gene over the next few years, and to hopefully add to my medal collection.

I have found a few new quotes recently too; “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great!” and “Lack of passion is fatal”. These are so true! I believe if you don’t really want to do something, you will not succeed! You have to really want it!