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