SportsShoes Blog

Last weekend saw me make another trip to Oudenaarde, Belgium for a bit of training and a 100km road kermesse race. I flew out on the Friday night and arrived at the house at about 9pm, tired but glad to be there! Saturday was spent going out for a ride on the nice quiet roads, a brief bit of revision then sorting stuff out for the race the next day.

During the afternoon we all met our coach down in the town, at the Tour of Flander’s cafe to have individual and team meetings to dicuss plans for the rest of the year. The cafe was great, one wall had loads of team jerseys pinned up on it, then there was a table featuring some of the signatures of past Tour of Flander’s winners!

The next morning, we all packed our race bags and drove to Burcht, a town in Antwerp. After signing on the riders gathered at the start line to begin and were told that any groups more than 1 minute 30 behind the lead group would be pulled out of the race…it was then that I realised it was going to be a fast one!

As soon as the race started I knew it was going to be hard, it was the constant change of pace that I struggled with as its something that is achieved by racing frequently. I tried to place myself at the front of the race, but once I got there, I didn’t have the legs to maintain the speed and so dropped back. Myself and a few others tailed off the back and despite my best efforts to stay in contact with the bunch I was dropped and was eventually pulled out.

I then spent the rest of the race riding round the course the other way to get a few miles in and watched my teammate Katie Colclough take a solo win!

After all this the girls went back to Oudenaarde and I went back to the airport and back home to complete the last 5 weeks of school!

http://www.britishcycling.org.uk/web/site/BC/gbr/EventReports2009/20090511_Academy_Women.asp