Scottish TT and British Madison Champs

Been yet another busy couple of week!! The work load at school has picked up and unfortunatly i came back from School Games with cold so it was another 2 days of school and load of catching up on work and lots of recovery before the Scottish TT Champs the following weekend. The Time Trial championships is run on a hilly 13 mile course just outside Dundee with big open roads which on a windy day makes it torture. Well it was a windy day!! The whole way round the course it felt like there was a head wind apart from about 1km with a tail wind which on Youth gear restrictions makes your legs go like the clappers. I didn't get the time i was aiming for but still happy with a 38:37 considering the conditions and the fact i'd been ill, and even better i won the Youth A Girls Championship so was in all a pretty good day on the bike, and to make it even better my little superstar of a team mate Eleanor Strathdee won her 1st Scottish Title in the Youth B Girls Championship!!

 But naturally its not all hard work and suffering as a small group of the youth had a gathering on the way home to chat and socialise but mainly to eat lots!!

Next up was a couple of easy days and a not to successful outing to track league in an attempt to find some track legs before the day trip to Manchester on the 28th for the British Madison Championship. It was a 7am start to get to Manchester for 1pm which was a bit early considering we weren't racing till 6pm but both Rhona and I agreed we'd rather have been there early so we could just chill out and watch the races and get ready with lots of time, which was lucky as an emergency trip to Evans was required as it turned out the nuts on the wheel i'd been loaded for the race was totally worn out! The panic was over quickly and with bikes sorted, warm up a bit of hand sling practice done it was race time.

Photo Credit to Dawn Fry

Photo Credit to Dawn Fry

With 9 teams entered and only 7 turning up on the day we know it was going to be a solid race and straight from the start it was full gas or at least it felt full gas to me. Its hard to pin point when or even how it even happened but we ended up distance off the "bunch" of 4/5 riders  and we were struggling to get back but i felt quite strong so i got Rhona to rest up the track and pushed on and didn't do another change till i'd made up the distance and got back into the bunch. For then on it was a case of staying in the group until on the last lap it went crazy and we ended up in a
sprint for 6th/7th position and unfortunately got pipped on the line. But its all a learning experience and as a pair Rhona and I were the youngest. But we did our best and in total honest i cant wait for next years championship!! On reflection there are so many positives that i can take from the race and hopefully if i work on the bad things we can go back and kick ass next year, but can never be sure how the season will play out but for now its bike brain off for 10 days as i take my time off before winter training starts. Just wanna say a big thanks to my Dad for being the driver/mechanic/very loud cheerer for the weekend.