Surf n’ Turf 2 Day National Women’s Roads Series Race

The level and quality of riders entered for this round of the National Women’s Road Series, far exceeds any other race I’ve entered;  there were 2 Olympic Champions (Laura Trott and Dani King) and 1 Paralympic Champion (Sarah Storey) as well as other members of the GB Team Pursuit Team, Katie Archibald and Elinor Barker!!! As expected, this made the racing faster  and tougher and was a really great experience.

I really enjoyed the crit race, it was certainly fast from the go, but I felt comfortable riding in the main group. I even followed one of Katie Archibald’s attacks, maybe not the best idea as it took a few laps back inside the main group for me to recover from that effort. I was unfortunately rather unlucky in this race as I got stuck right behind a crash towards the end of the race. I had to break suddenly to a complete stop, immediately  behind it. I was therefore one of the last riders to get around the crash and begin chasing back to the main bunch. The bunch seemed soooo far ahead but I put in a really big effort and somehow managed to catch up the bunch after 2 laps of chasing. I was one of few who actually managed this, so I was very pleased with that. It took me a while to recover from this effort and there weren’t many laps to the end now; so I wasn’t in the best position (literally within the bunch and physically) to be as competitive as I would have liked in the final sprint. I managed a decent 26^th in the end which I’m very pleased about, because I was glad that I even made it back into the main group!

The road race the following day started off very fast from the go and there were lots of bends, twists and turns, so it didn’t help that I wasn’t in the best positon within the group. Due to being really tired after yesterday’s race, I unfortunately eventually dropped off and found myself with a group of 4 riders. We rode well together for the majority of the race but soon there were only 3 of us. After I recovered I did a lot of work on the front and found myself picking up the pace. I knew that Laura (in our group) was a couple of seconds ahead of me in the GC so I realised that it would be a good tactical move to drop Laura at some point so that I could move up a place in the GC. So with 6 miles to go I attacked just as Laura was finishing her turn up the drag hill. Laura dropped off our group so now there were only 2 of us. I then managed to win the sprint against the other woman at the end, so I came 1^st out of our group. It was definitely a tough and long race and so I was relieved when it was over! A really great weekend though racing against lots of top riders!