SportsShoes Blog

Well I’m now a full time cyclist, exams over and done with and no more school…and it feels great! Moving out to Belgium happened a bit later than planned, as I picked up a knee injury whilst studying for my exams….the combination of sitting at my desk for long periods of time, lack of bike maintainance by myself and being in rigid shoe cleates lead to right knee pain.  This meant that, instead of finishing my last exam and getting on a plane out to Belgium I had to go over to Manchester and spend a few days there, going in to see physio Phil Burt at the EIS.  I also changed my pedals to Speedplay which are fairly new pedals which allow greater movement in the cleate so that you can find the right pedalling position…..all very technical…but yeah I’m fine now!

Once I’d got that sorted, it was back in training for 2 weeks, doing a mix of long rides, rollers and 10 minute time trial reps, then to the U23 European Road Championships in Hooglede, Belgium.  I finished 35th in the time trial, with other GB riders Katie Colclough in 10th and Lucy Martin in 37th.

The road race then took place a few days later, and at 135km it would be the longest race I’d done so far (by a good 50km!) and one which my coach said he was not expecting me to finish.  My priority he explained, was to help out riders such as Katie Colclough and Annie Last and finish as much of the race as possible.  Having saying that, I was eager to finish, but in hot temperatures, a fast pace of racing and a high standard of riders my race was over at 108km.  I was disappointed but knew that my preparation hadn’t been ideal.  GB had an excellent result though, with Katie finishing in 2nd place behind Chantaal Blak of Holland, and in front of current senior silver medallist Marianne Vos who came 3rd.

From Hooglede, some of the Academy girls returned to the UK for a mid season break, others to a pre European Track Champs training camp, whilst I stayed in Belgium.  I’m currently staying in Westmeerbeek with some other cyclists but will move back to Oudenaarde in a couple of weeks when everyone else returns.

Not written for a while, been racing and training so much! My latest race was Colne GP last night where I was in the 3rd and 4th support race. It went well and I can definitely feel myself getting fitter! I had some track time in Manchester last week where I was team pursuiting with Jo Rowsell, Katie Colclough and Lizzie Armitstead, all members of the GB programme, and Jo, a World Champion at the discipline.  I’m looking forward to going to Belgium soon to compete in a few kermesses and crits over there, as the competition is always good and better quality than in the UK. After that my training will all be geared towards the Junior Europeans so sharpening up with lots of 100% efforts!