End of season 2011 (literally) - Abergavenny RR

With Abergavenny coming up and yet another uphill finish, my aim was to race a more active race.  I knew that my chances were good as long as I could keep in contact with the front.  There were several lone attacks early on, including Eve who got away in the first lap, but all attacks were brought back by the bunch.  A few laps later there was a big attack, I tried to go with it and in doing so almost dropped off the back of the back of the bunch!  The break did not get away, although Sarah Byrne did, gaining over 2 minutes on the bunch at one point. It all came back together again and on the final lap I could sit on the front no problem and I was feeling really good.  By the time we got near the bottom of the finishing climb, I had managed to end up at the back again.  I spotted one of the other girls riding up the bunch to the front and followed.  With 1km to go I was on the front, this was my chance....

All too soon reality struck. I was lying in the middle of the road on my back holding my shoulder. There had been a crash and I had broken my collarbone. Gutted.

I had looked round (as much as my injured body would allow) to see what had happened. Most of the bunch were also on the floor. I could see my bike in the verge in the distance with the front wheel bent in two.

The couch potato did a really good job organising everything including getting my parents to travel down from Manchester to come and pick my car up from South Wales.  I think he was a little gutted that he didn’t get to go in the helicopter, but relived I wasn’t badly injured.

After speaking to other riders at the Preston National Crit Championships the following week (in which Eve got 10^th!!!!) we learned a rider on the left of the road hooked handle bars with another rider which sent them crashing across the road flinging me over the handlebars. The rest of the girls had nowhere to go and had run into the back of us.

I’m really grateful to all the help from everyone at the race who helped from the NEG riders, commissares, the Dixon’s, The Weaver’s, The Shenton’s along with the paramedics and medical staff at the Hospital in Abergavenny.  Sorry if I’ve forgotten you but I am thankful for your help.

Total races for the year: 11
Races completed in top 20: 2
Total races completed in the bunch: 5
DNFs: 1
Broken bones: 1
Frames written off: 1

Total races completed by the couch potato: 2 (he’s happy)

Mid Season - Part 2

From Bedford my performances continued to get stronger with bunch finishes in Bashall Eaves (30^th), Stratford (15th) and Naseby (16th). At Naseby Mel Bury had made her come back following 5 months of illness and Eve was looking extremely strong and was ‘beasting it on the front’ – Mels words, not mine. All got a bunch finish including Maxgear triathlete Heather (who immediately went for a run after finishing the race, which looked more like a sprint than a run if you ask me!!!!) and Eve just missed out on the podium with 4^th.

Mid season also included the well publicised Johnson Heath Tech Series as part of the Halfords Tour Series. The Maxgear girls raced in the local events in Stoke and Oldham. Both events had a big crowds and we had podium photos taken as a team. On the start line Snap ‘I’ve got the Power’ boomed out of the speakers and the crowd bashed the barriers to the beat. That song still gives me chills when it pops up on shuffle on the turbo .
With not much experience in crits, I overgeared and got dropped, although was only lapped by the breakaway on both occasions. Still the experience was awesome – in particular Oldham was exciting with a steep decent into a sharp corner at the bottom with a reverse camber. A cobbled climb made up the rest of the 1k circuit. Both crits were great fun to ride, the music and the atmosphere was second to none. I will definitely be back next year.

Total races for the year: 10
Races completed in top 20: 2
Total races completed in the bunch: 5

Total races completed by the couch potato: 1 (He's proud of it, he insisted I include this)

Mid Season Part 1 - Bedford 2 day

Since the race in Cheshire I had been looking for more women’s races to enter and come across Maxgear RT who needed more female riders to compete in the National Women’s Team Series. I immediately snapped up the chance to ride for a cool and successful team – one which had won the Revolution series in the previous winter.

My first race riding for Maxgear was the Bedford 2 day. The best two days racing of my life and my favourite race of the calendar so far.

I was very excited to receive my new Champions System Kit. The couch potato thought it was a bit too florescent, but I loved it. It was extremely comfortable and fit perfectly! I was nervous and worried about not being able to keep up and making the team look bad. I’m not sure if was this drive not to let the team down, or enhanced confidence following the Cheshire Classic, but I need not have worried.

Stage 1 was the team time trial. 9 miles and all of them uphill!! We finished 11th of 18 teams which wasn’t bad considering we’d never ridden together before.

Stage 2 was a 50mile road race around an interesting lumpy circuit with a hard uphill finish. Warm up had been short and I was extremely nervous waiting on the start line. The race was quick and windy. The pace was set by World Champion Sarah Storey and who managed on the first lap to shell out over half the field.

As I counted down the laps, determined I would not be dropped too.  Despite hitting the same large pothole on each of the four laps, there were no punctures and I survived until the bell lap. A wave of excitement went through me - I was about to finish a road race in the bunch for the first time. Nor was I going to let my team down!  By the last climb I had ended up at the back, but of a bunch of around 40 I still managed to finish 25th. I was ecstatic! 

Day two was harder still, with legs like lead from the previous day and a windy individual TT of two laps of the bowl at Millbrook test track, followed by a tough race up 6 laps of the Alpine course. I finished just a few minutes down on the race leaders finishing 30th in the overall standings. A fantastic result!

Early Season 2011

Before this year I was fairly new to road racing but not a novice in bike racing.  I had competed on the Velodrome for a number of seasons and had won the women’s ACT track league in 2010 but I had always liked road and it was time to race a full road race season.

My professional accountancy final exams had forced me to take a break from cycling during the back end of 2010 – not a great end to a cycling season.  For anyone who likes numbers (the easiest way for me to communicate as an accountant) my 2010 road race stats look like this:

Total races in 2010: 4
Punctures: 1
Crashes: 1
Races in which was lapped: 2

It was all worthwhile avoiding racing and taking time out off the bike, as I passed all my final exams and I submitted all my documents last week to become a fully qualified chartered accountant!  Typically this time off the bike was followed by a long period of heavy snow and general bad weather.  A very slow start to 2011.

My first two races of 2011 were the 3rd/4th cat CDNW races at Pimbo and Saighton - very early on in the year and dominated by men!!!.  After a stifled winter, this was a very bad idea. Unsurprisingly I was dropped and lapped multiple times – never mind.

The first serious race was the Cheshire Classic - part of the women’s national series. This was one of the four events I had entered in the previous year. The race was a series of ten laps of a circuit which included a short, sharp climb through Acton Bridge - also the finish.

Last year I had been dropped on the first climb up to Action Bridge and lapped by what was left of the main group. I was determined this wasn’t going to happen this time. I gritted my teeth and hung on to the top of the climb. I couldn’t believe it when I was still in the main group, we turned the corner at the top and I hung on as the group was pushing up the false flat. Then I punctured, typical.

 I got a wheel change off the neutral service and continued to find the group had been stopped just up the road after a horrendous crash had taken place on the main road in an incident involving a car and around 10 riders. I stopped to make sure everyone was ok. Richard (my couch potato boyfriend) had turned up, unbelievably on his bike, to watch and was helping the injured and told me to carry on.  Once the race had restarted I managed to stay with the main group for a couple of laps before dropping off the back.  I ended up finishing in a small group just a few minutes down on the lead group.  I left the race feeling good – a vast improvement on the previous year’s performance.

Total races in 2011: 3
Races finished on the same lap: 1