Monastory: A Day for Pictures

The team I will be riding for in the Bay Series (Jan 2-6) has apparantly been finalised, and the Volvo Womens Team will be led by Belinda Goss, with Kirsty Broun, Gina Grain, Katie Jones and myself. It is an awesome lineup and I can't wait to race! Plus I get a helmet! How cool!

Today

You could say today was a day of images. All day of stills and video photography, plus interviews first thing in the morning out on site, and again at the return to the hotel. I feel tired now and it is before midnight (ie, 7pm Melbourne time)! What the..?
For most of the ride we covered parts of a 14 mile secluded beach access road, with the shoot base back at two very old barns. There were vans, RVs, catering staff, post production, supervising things, two medicos (one being a Maso, and very good value!) and bugger knows who else and what their titles were - but pretty much just like in a movie shoot. Or, how I would imagine a movie shoot might look like.
While we did spend a lot of time on the bikes, the riding was not quality and the two short ergo sessions I squeezed in made up for a mixed day. Tomorrow appears to have more time for some steady base work which would suit me well (with a few dedicated efforts of course).
I've included a stack of photos to capture some of the set up, but two favourite shots are up the front in case you get bored early:
Favourite Shot 1
As we were taking action shots out on the road, we were required to have a rolling road closure. This naturally requires two highway patrol cars. I couldn't resist, they looked just like they were part of the set - how movie-like were their cars?

Favourite Shot 2
Does Apidra make my arse look big?

The rest of the shots kinda follow in order of the day. Shashank took some great shots of me from the back of the truck, but I think I have included enough of me already.

Early morning, about 7.15am out at the barns and shoot base. Is everyone here?

Poby provides us with some frosty instructions:

Pacific Rim bonding between the team - Kiwi Tim and Ohio Matt

Two production vans for us to get changed in and to do something else? I don't know, I only went into one:

Tim P gets his face done (in one of the vans above) so he can get all sweaty riding all day.

I decided to warmup on the rollers with all my cold weather kit on (including the killer helmet). Bloody people came from everywhere to see the 'roller spectacular!' How amazing!

At lunch I also put some time into doing a quick ergo session, which required 10s sprints. Talk about difficult, trying to retain balance while sprinting on rollers with a camera crew trying to get closeups of your front wheel ('I'm serious, you don't want to get too close to that!'):

I got to meet the farmer whose facilities we used for the day. He had just returned from feeding the cattle. He asked me why my brothers weren't interested in becoming farmers. I gave my usual response, only to learn later that this property has been in his family for over four generations.

The camera truck crew checks the spacing setting for the appropriate distance to ride behind the truck.

Scenes from lunch:

Morgan has a brush with fame - getting her autograph from moi!

Andy also gets my autograph, and demonstrates how he'll be keeping me close to his chest:

View from the back of the truck at us, Team Type 1. What a tight formation! What professionals! (This was on a hill where I was going steadily out the back at this point, wanting to be sick. After getting dropped on the descent and struggling in, I got to the turnaround to find my blood sugar around 2m/moL).