Weekend of 1^st/2^nd February 2014

Saturday- Men’s e/1/2/3 race at Hillingdon

This weekend I was really looking forward to my first race in my new race kit! I’d entered for the e/1/2/3 men’s race at my local Hillingdon circuit, which was fully booked and promised to be a really fast pace race as usual. Whilst browsing Facebook earlier that Saturday morning, I came across a picture which I first presumed was a river. After taking a double take I realised that it was not a river but in fact a photo of part of the Hillingdon circuit! Despite knowing that the circuit was flooded we set off to the race, hoping that the flood water had been cleared. The race organisers had done an amazing job and the majority of water was cleared, so the circuit was rideable and the race was on. The race started off blisteringly fast with an attack in the first 100m. Due to the fast nature of the first few laps, my target is always just hold on until the race settles down. With such a big field it was important to maintain a good position within the group which I managed to do.

The Flooded circuit - thanks to Sam Grant for the photo

 All in all, the race was going rather well for me until an incident with 5 laps to go. Going round one of the tight corners I was holding my line when somebody’s front wheel collided with my back wheel for a few seconds with such force I was lucky to not come off my bike. This meant though that I had to stop that lap for my Dad to sort out my bike and then I could re-join the race. In my quick pit stop we didn’t realize that my hangar had completely been bent and therefore the last few laps of the race were extremely difficult for me as my gears were malfunctioning. I hung in though but I was unable to be competitive in the sprint. Overall a good training race and hopefully next time I’ll be able to do well in the sprint as I won’t have any mechanical problems.

After the collision- Thanks to British Cycle Sport for the photo

Sunday – Road Ride





It was a lovely blue sky sunny day and it promised to be a great day for a good long training ride. If only the luck on our ride was as good luck as the weather was. Me and my friend Sam, set off before 9, the air still very nippy, planning to fit in a good 60 mile ride. The ride started off really well, unsurprisingly as the sun was really shining down on us I braved and took off my leg warmers. Which for the next couple of miles seemed like a really good idea, until… we met some rather long flooded sections of road! Riding through this wasn’t very fun, especially with bare legs, I began to get rather cold. However, the next few hills seemed to fix that problem, really pushing and driving up the hills; for practise as there are a number of the hilly circuits in the National Women’s road series. At the top of one of the hills there was a amazing view, it was quite different from usual though as you couldn’t see the majority of the fields as they were flooded. We continued on our ride, but our ride came abruptly to an end, at probably one of the worst points in the ride, just coming up to a busy junction with several cars just behind us. Sam’s gear hangar snapped completely off, meaning that there was no way that we were going to be able to fix it and continue on our ride. So basically we were stuck at quite a busy junction, on the side sitting on a muddy verge 30 miles from home! I called my Dad up so that he could come and pick us up, however we had an hour to wait until he arrived. In that time we completely froze, I immediately put my leg warmers back on but unfortunately that didn’t help much. I then went for a little ride around the area to see if there was a local café to stay in whilst we waited, unfortunately not. So we were stuck on our muddy verge. However one thing that was really nice was the number of cyclists that stopped by and asked if we needed any help!! J Eventually my dad arrived to pick us up and I could go home and warm up in a nice hot bath, which I most certainly needed.