WHAT'S a good way to get motivated for the Road National Championships? How about being named in the Australian Cycling Team.
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Bathurst Para-cycling stars Emilie Miller and David Nicholas were named in the 65-member national team last week, one which includes riders from all cycling disciplines.
"To see your name on the list is definitely always a good thing and when we got the email the other day, you still open the email and go 'Quick, where's my name?'," Miller laughed.
"You never assume anything at the moment and it's always an honour to be there and be within the company of people we have in our team. To be able to be involved in things like national team camps, just to be in that environment is something really special."
All squad members have been given a category ranking based on their potential with both Miller and Nicholas listed in the highest tier. Given they've both won multiple world championships, it was no surprise.
"We've always had that ranking internally, it might not have been publicly published before. The ranking system is based on your past or expected performances at a world championship level, that's why we were listed as podium," Miller explained.
While the 2020 cycling calendar was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bathurst couple were still able to return some star performances early in the year.
At the Road Nationals Miller claimed road race gold for her classification, while Queensland native Nicholas enjoyed a golden sweep of his Ballarat campaign with victory in the C3 men's road race, national time trial and UCI time trial.
Then in February Nicholas won the gold medal in the men's C3 individual pursuit at the world titles in Milton, Canada.
"We were really lucky most of our cycling stuff was at the start of the year, Dave obviously got to go to track world championships and we got our national championships and Tour Down Under in," Miller said.
"We actually had a really full on year, because of COVID we definitely had a quieter year on the sporting scene, but in our personal lives we moved into a house, we got engaged, changed jobs, so we had quite the eventful year."
Now the pair are preparing for the 2021 Road National Championships which will run from February 3-7 in Ballarat. They'll both begin their campaigns on the second day of competition with time trials.
Just what racing comes after nationals remains to be seen, but Nicholas is hoping to earn selection to compete at the Paralympic Games in Tokyo.
"It's going to be a really challenging year for everyone as COVID is still affecting things, we're really lucky that our road nationals will be going ahead as planned," Miller said.
"We'll get road nationals done and we've got a national team camp down there this year as well, so it will be great to be back in that team environment.
"Even with Tokyo being postponed they've kept the same program and due to the way my classification is being run at Tokyo unfortunately it's not an option for me. Dave will be targeting Tokyo for both track and road, so hopefully that can go ahead in a COVID safe way."
