After a long winter of training, cold hands and road biking, my race season has finally started. Its been so long that I was beginning to wonder if I even liked racing still! My preparation over the last month couldn’t have been worse with a knee injury preventing anything race specific, then to make matters worse I had a bit of an upset stomach last night and this morning. Still, I was determined to make the most of the opportunity to race the pros and give myself a benchmark for how I’m doing.
The gun went and it was straight into a 2km climb, all elbows out as we jostled for position. I got into a rhythm and was doing ok towards the back of the main group. The pace was fast but very steady all the way up, and with 20 degrees and the sun blaring down it was a relief to get to the top and hit the descent. After the first couple of laps there were a few of us jostling backwards and forwards so I really had to concentrate to stick with them.
By the 5th lap although I was having to fight cramp, i was actually feeling pretty strong. I dropped a couple of girls on the climb and caught up with a group of juniors. Until then I had made time on the descent each lap, but some of them were really quick – good though, made me push harder to keep up. Climbing the 6th lap i was having a real battle with 2 other girls, and starting to prepare for a tough race on the last (7th) lap. I was gutted to hear the motorbike coming up behind and see Elisabeth Osl coming by to lap me. After that I really gave it everything to get ahead of the group and avoid getting passed by anyone else, and managed to put a bit of time into them on the last descent.
Just seen the results (Swiss efficiency for you!), I was 21st, not too bad – a bit of googleing showed I beat some experienced riders too. Overall I’m pretty happy with my performance, I know with more preparation I can do better but at least now I have a benchmark. Most importantly it was great fun – role on the next one in 2 weeks!
Thanks to Laia for doing my bottles, couldn’t have managed without you! also my Erasmus supporters, and of course UCD, Met and Think Bike.