This month was unfortunately pretty quiet on the racing side of things…. I did compete in a Darley Moor cat 2/3/4 on the 4th of March though, which I’m going to tell you more about now:).
My race didn’t start until 11:00, so I had plenty of time. I needed to eat at least 3 hours before the race, to enable me to fully digest my food, so the timing of the race was ideal. My plan for the race was to sit in the bunch for the first few laps, then try and get off the front, as I don’t have the strongest sprint. However this is very difficult to accomplish at Darley Moor, due to the circuit being so fast.
Once I’d eaten, put on my kit, finished my roller warm up, I was out on the circuit for some warm up laps. Not to my surprise, it was very windy. Darley Moor is known to always be windy, as it’s such an open circuit. I found there was a tailwind up to the finish line, and a headwind on the other half of the circuit. I usually prefer a headwind up to the finish line, because it can get sketchy in the sprint - which allows me more time to get round riders. Once I’d finished my warm up laps, it was time to start the race. The whistle goes, and there is already an attack, but it is soon brought back. This occurs multiple times throughout the race, but it allows me to notice the riders who are looking powerful. Once the first 15 minutes had passed, I saw that a team story rider and an empella rider were looking really strong - so if I wanted to break away, it would have to be with them. I didn’t have to initiate the attack. I saw the story rider attack, and reacted to get onto her wheel. There were around 5 of us off the front now, but the bunch was chasing hard. Unfortunately we didn’t stay away, and got brought back pretty quickly. From then I knew it was most likely going to come down to a sprint. We had one lap to go now, I found myself make my way to the front of the group, as we made our way to the other side of the circuit. The pace started to rise, I was now on the second row. Just before the finish line straight, there is a corner which can cause a lot of mayhem within the sprint. Unfortunately for me that’s exactly what happened. I went from 4th to 10th within a second. I then sprinted all the way up to the finish line, and managed a 7th place. Not the greatest result, but I’m just super happy to start racing again!
Next up for me will be the first round on the British team cup towards the end of April 😎