Cheshire Classic

Bit late with this post but just a wee update on how I got on at the 2nd round of the British Series, the Cheshire Classic, which took place last weekend. I travelled south with my mum and team mate Claire on Saturday and had a quick preride of the course, which included a hill named 'The Cliff' as you can imagine, it was pretty steep. It felt okay in practise but I knew after a few times up it, it was going to start to sting a bit.

So onto race day and we arrived at the HQ in plenty of time to get warmed up and ready for the start at 10. With a big field of 71 riders I knew I wanted to be at the front for the neutralised section, which was about 4km long before we hit the course for 10 laps of the 7.7km course. I was right on the lead car as it pulled away, which was perfect because it meant I didn't have to worry about holding my position or moving up or anything. Soon the lead car pulled away and we were off, I got in the wheels and just tried to move up into the top 10 for the hill every lap, which seemed to work because I would slide back a bit but only found myself at the back of the bunch once. I had one scary moment when there was a crash just in front of me going up the hill but I managed to get round it an chase back on.

After much pain every time up the hill it was finally the last lap, the finish was half way up the hill so there was technically still a bit to go but for some reason I just totally lost my racing mentality, I think I had been so focused on sticking in the bunch to the finish that I just forgot what to do at the finish of the race, so ended up way too far back to be competitive at all and came in 26th. I think I just need more experience of the finish of races in bunches but I'm sure it'll come with practise.

Congrats to Karla Boddy on a great win! There is a good wee video of the race on the website at http://www.cheshireclassic.co.uk

Thanks for reading, got a few quiet weekends before the Scottish Road Race Champs up in Aberdeen in 2 weeks time