Spring Time Pursuit R1

With the Mountain Bike Season drawing very close it was time to give my lungs a bit of a blast in a Pursuit Race on the road! To be honest I didn’t really have an action plan but just to see what will happen. I was feeling pretty good, after some long winter months of good quality training with Elite Velo I was expecting to do quite well.

The weather forecast wasn’t looking very good for the Womens or Mens Race so jackets were thrown in just in case. However it managed to stay dry, with only one patch of drizzle so we were very lucky indeed! The course was mainly flat with a couple of undulating sections so I assumed it was going to be pretty fast. 

A good turnout for the Women’s field; 14 riders in total split into two groups, setting of 2 minutes apart. I was in the second group which went off at 10.32am. The first couple of laps we were working really well together, keeping up a nice even pace. Primes were on lap 2 and 4 so was hoping to get in a good position for these. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough sprint in me on the 2^nd prime so eased up a bit.

Once we caught the first group things started to get a little messy. With a mixture of newbies and racers some were unknown to the formalities in racing. It was quite frustrating not knowing where people were wanting to position themselves I got boxed in a couple of times.

The final lap the pace started to pick up slightly and a couple of women trying to break away. There were quite strong headwinds which lead up to the finish line which did make it a lot more difficult for everyone; as long as you were tucked in you were fine.

I was in just the right position for the final sprint; although we were still in quite a heavy bunch at the front it was a bit of a squash for the riders behind. Myself and Miriam (Hope Factory Racing) were pretty much level when sprinting for the final 10m; but she just got it by a fraction.

I was a bit gutted but happy with 2^nd position for my first road race of the season and now knowing what exactly what the course is like I will have a much clearer mind on how to properly race it. Two more of the series left, fingers crossed it’s a top 3!