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!
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