On Sat 25 March my pilot Jay and I ventured out to compete in our first ever time trial race as a para cycling duo, and what a day we had!
We were accompanied by the infamous exsight “White Bike“ complete with new tyres and a shiny detail .. she almost outshone her riders! A big thank you to Chris Mills for the tyres and Ben Gaffey for getting her ready to race.
Randwick Cycling Club hosted the event, a 18km time trial on the Hefferon Park criterion track, renowned for being one of the most technical tracks around. They say if you can master this track you can master any… and we did!
With initial guidance from the two other teams, Paralympic and national champions no less, we were in very good hands. It only took Jay a couple of warmup laps to get a feel for the track and off we went. We were told if we could average 30 km/h we were doing well, so this was our goal. You can imagine our delight when we look down and realise we were averaging 31.5! We completed 9 laps of the 2 km course at this speed and gave it everything we had, with nothing left in the tank when we finished. The bike didn’t let us down and we only clipped the backpedal once on a tight corner but Jay quickly corrected that by taking the corner wider for the rest of the race.
Given that neither of us have never done anything like this before we did incredibly well. We placed 3rd, made the podium and even won $30 prize money! We will be donating our prize money to Exsight as thanks for the loan of the bike and the support we received from Geoff leading up to the race.
We cannot tell you how much fun it was and the experience has inspired me as a Stoker to keep training and get stronger and faster in order to reach my goals. I can’t thank my pilot Jay Gaffey enough for all the support and encouragement she gives me every day.
A massive thank you to the Randwick cycling club for supporting us on the day and of course to Geoff Stratton and the Exsight Tandems Team for everything you do to keep us riding.
We left the track with huge smiles on our faces feeling very proud of ourselves and what we had achieved. Two time Paralympic and silver medallist Stu called out to us as we left…“See you at nationals ladies“…Well you never know .. the journey continues 
