New Beginnings

Last weekend was the beginning of a new part of my racing life. After a disappointing final year racing in youth I was lacking in motivation going into the cold, dark winter months and in all honesty only put in some sporadic and highly unstructured training. I did some cross over the winter mainly cause I love it and find it incredibly fun but also for some training benefit. After going out on some rides with the Junior race squad of ERC I got a bit of a spark back, even if I was always last up the hills. After Christmas I started to pick up my training a bit more and continued to ride with the Junior team, I found it a great motivation and comfort to have team mates and a group to ride with every weekend. After a few good weeks training and slowly building some fitness again I decided to enter a few races to test the water and basically see if I still enjoyed racing my bike.  

To kick off the season I entered two races last weekend, a crit on the Saturday and a road race on Sunday. Saturday was an early start and a drive south to Salt Ayre near Preston for a womens crit race. This was nothing new as I'd used dispensation as a youth to ride a few womens crit races so the routine was the same. Change into skin suit (and lots of layer), sign on and get numbers pinned, few practice laps then quite blast on the rollers to try and remind my leg what a race warm up was. The new thing about this race was my junior gear restriction, a whole 2 extra cog on the back wheel compared to youth restrictions! This may not sound exciting but for someone who

Photo from Lancaster University

relies more on power than leg speed, those two extra cogs got a lot of use.

Anyway onto the race. The weather was slowly turning colder as 13 of us lined up neatly for a short briefing before the race began. We stayed largely together for the first few laps and then a few attacks went. In a burst of youthful enthusiasm I chased quite hard to try and stay with the top few riders, and for a while I did, but the inevitable happened and I got distanced from the bunch of 6 riders as the winning attack went. The next 25-30 minutes were then a solo time trial effort for me, which as my mum commented after "you love a TT effort Emma" and it's true. I spent a large amount of my time racing as a youth, time trailing my way round crits not being able to stick in with the bunch. So this was again nothing new as I steadily plodded round Salt Ayre barely using my brakes in the whole effort due to the wind and lovely swooping bends of corners. Heading into the 5 laps to go I'd found someone to work with and after realising we weren't going to catch anyone else the focus turned to not getting caught by anyone. Coming up the finishing straight the final time I jumped early keen to try out my extra two cogs in the sprint for 8th. Happily I got it! After a short cool down on the rollers and a yazzoo to help aid recovery for my race the next day, it was off to the hotel for a relaxing evening. 

Photo by Ellen Isherwood 

The next day was very new. My first ever proper open road womens road race. I'd like to say I was totally chilled about it but that'd be a bit of a lie. In truth the whole thing felt a bit scary. After 4 years of racing at youth level 
you learn the do's and don't's, you learn the common race courses like the back of your hand, you learn your routine, the race distance is max 50 minutes and most importantly you know people. So turning up to a road race with 80 women who all barring 3 I didn't know, in a place I'd never been to, racing a distance way longer than I was used to, was scary and as my mum will testify I was freaking out a bit but I held it together (mostly). 

Once on the start line I started to relax bit more and chatted away to a very nice women that was also a newbie to road racing. After a bit of hanging around we got underway with 18 laps of around a 3km circuit to complete, and the heavens opened. With in two laps I was completely soaked through and started to warm up a little. 

Photo by Ellen Isherwood

Before the race I'd made it clear I had low expectations and was simply setting goals to achieve. First goal was to survive the initial rush at the start, second was to last the first 20km, next was to manage to halfway through the race with the front group, and after that to take every lap as it came. I got into a little rhythm of moving through the bunch on the slight downhill and flat to be able to slip back a bit on the drag to the finish to ensure I made it through with the bunch. And as the minutes and laps ticked by I achieve my first two goals feeling reasonable comfortable.

As the race got to 10 laps to go there was a prime/sprint lap. I knew any acceleration in the bunch up the drag to the line was going to cause me problems so I tried to position myself as far forward as possible without getting caught up in the sprint for the line. After digging hard I made it up with the group, just, but struggling with the cold and wet this was a effort I paid for. The next few laps were mainly hanging onto the coattails the group. With 7 laps to go I blew and was distance quite quickly, so I switched to TT mode and put my head down to try and maybe catch a few other dropped riders. 

Photo thanks to Fred Bamford

Luckily I managed to team up with Laura Morgan of VCUK and after a brief discussion we agreed to work together. A fist bump closed the deal and we pushed on for the last 5 laps. With 2 to go I blew big time hardly able to change gear due to the cold. Laura saw I was done in and let me sit on her wheel for the last laps. Coming up the final straight going into one lap to go a blur of speed went passed as the leaders lapped us, it was inevitable as two lone riders against the wind were no match for the bunch. But this meant my first road race was over and I'd survived the distance (well minus 3km).

 I knew getting dropped and lapped isn't much to shout about, but I managed all my goals, stuck in when I was dropped, gave it my all and made my mum proud. And hey what more can you ask for!