So my last post was after the Woking tour series, next up on the Thursday was the tour series at Aylsham and we were greeted with pouring rain, it had to be some of the worst rain I've raced in. When it was at its heaviest it was actually hard to see! Naturally the slippy roads made for a lot of crashes, including me unfortunately. I stuck with the main bunch for the whole race until I crashed with 3 to go, I was pretty gutted especially as I'd managed to score some points at both the sprint laps so I think I was going well for the sprint. But the crowds were amazing, cheering when I got up and then again on the last few laps when I was on my own.
The next day was a long drive over to Preston as I was racing the Surf and Turf stage race at the weekend. The race consisted of a 1 km TT, a crit and a road race. I did a good time in the TT coming in 9th. In the crit I was up the front the whole race and took 5th in the sprint, although I wasn't helped by a tail wind up the finishing straight which meant I was at the top of my junior gears.
Next day was the road race and despite attacking and riding across to attacks for most of the second half of the race nothing was sticking and it came down to a sprint where I unfortunately mistook the 200 m to go sign for the finish.. So blew up a bit! But managed to keep 9th on GC.
After being away for so long and a lot of racing I had a really easy week, with just a few days on the bike. After this I was really looking forward to getting back into some good, hard training. So that brings me to last weekend where I was doing the Curlew Cup race, near to Newcastle. It was my first race in 2 weeks so I was pretty excited and ready to go. My legs were suffering a bit but I tried to get in a few moves, unfortunately completely missed the one that stuck but you can't go with every attack! So I was in the bunch and would be contesting for 6th place.. I knew if I waited for the sprint I wasn't going to get 6th, there was quite a few good sprinters in the bunch, so I went for it with 1km to go, I got a gap and basically nailed myself to try and hold off the bunch.. Unfortunately it didn't work and I got caught with 200m to go, of course my legs were now dead so I rolled in 37th, but worth a shot!
Finally I was in Otley last night for the crit racing, this is the first year they've run a women's race and it was a great atmosphere with big crowds, so thanks very much to the organisers for putting the women's race on! I had raced the youth race on the same course 2 years ago and had horrible memories of the hill, having done a few practice laps it didn't seem so bad though. Throughout the race I kept up near the front and kept an eye on Elinor Barker and Hannah Barnes who were probably the 2 strongest riders, a couple of times they would open a gap that I managed to bridge only for the bunch to follow a few seconds later which was a bit gutting! In the end it came down to a sprint, I was in a good position coming into the descent but lost a few places before the final corner and ended up 5th. I am happy with that but I do have this constant feeling of wanting to do better!
So now I'm on the road south for a 10 day trip starting with the women's team series at Oakley on Saturday followed by the Dudley women's omnium round on Sunday and town centre crits in Guildford on Wednesday before the Essex Giro 2 day next weekend. Lots of racing, I will try to do a bit of an update between races!
Thanks for reading!
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