Anatomy of a DNF

Sunday was my first (and probably not last, but hopefully not very often) "did not finish" in a cycle race. A day later, I'm still kicking myself over it -- not the actual DNF itself, but the way it came about -- and I guess the best I can come away with is that it's a learning experience if nothing else.

I had done a Surrey League men's cat 3 race on the Dunsfold circuit back in March and done pretty well to stay with the pack, though in retrospect that course with its twisty narrow lanes, short descents and draggy climb is pretty suited to my abilities and weaknesses when racing with guys. The Walliswood course where we raced yesterday... not so much. Leona was right to be a bit worried!

The story:

We did a recce lap of the course about an hour before the race (Jim, Leona, another guy and I) and even at a nice warm-up pace it was over 30km/h. Jim commented on that but it didn't occur to me that this should be a warning. Mistake #1.

The race began and after a near disaster in the neutralised zone due to some poor road surfaces and a pack of 60 riders trying to avoid oncoming cars, the pace sped up. A few attacks went off at the first climb, but nothing too serious. I was trying to stay near the front and having varying success; the roads were really busy with cars coming at us, making riding on the right/outside somewhat stressful. After a while I moved to the left/inside, which was a bit easier though more risky for getting caught out by accelerations in the group. Mistake #2.

The second half of Lap 1 was marked by a sharp turn followed by a twisty rolling bit, a fast steepish descent with a crappy road surface, then onto a busy major road with a slight uphill helped by a tailwind. Starting the descent in the front half of the group, I was near the back by the end, but the bunch slowed considerably on the uphill as things came back together. I figured this would probably happen every lap. Mistake #3.

Lap 2 was more of the same, though instead of getting up to the front, I was caught out on the first climb behind some slower guys. Wary of putting out too much energy too early in the race, I decided not to claw my way back to the front and instead try to sit on for a bit. It's sort of dangerous to be near the back in such a large group as it's hard to gauge whether you're 40th, or 50th or at the very very back (to me, anyway). I didn't want to look around behind me, but if I had I would have seen that I was literally sitting amongst the rear dozen riders, not a good spot to be! Mistake #4.

Then it happened. Sprinting out of the sharp corner cost me some energy, and the twisty rolling bit didn't see me gain any position back. Suddenly the swift downhill appeared, I hesitated over some rough road and everyone who was behind me shot past me, including Leona. "No worries", I thought, gritting my teeth and giving the powertap everything I could muster as we turned onto the main road. "They'll slow down any second now". Except they didn't. Jim's power data later showed that that was the hardest section of the entire race, that five minutes from the A29 up past HQ to the lapboard. Whether it was an attack or just a general sharp increase in pace, I don't know. I could only watch as the group powered away without me in it. A minute or two later I saw Leona coming back to me as the guy in front of her was gapped and she was unable to get around him. We looked at each other and shook our heads, stunned by our combination of bad positioning, bad timing and bad luck at being caught out. 40km/h became 35km/h as the two of us worked together for another lap (passing more than one disheartened guy who'd also been dropped, including Mr. Gapped). But that was the end of our day in the bunch.

Funny enough, my power data shows I averaged the same watts for the lap with Leona as I did for the first two laps with the bunch, but at 5-6km/h slower, our choices were to ride five more laps alone or slow down and be lapped by the main field and try to latch on as they went by. And as it was my third race in eight days and I'd also run over 44km during the week, my brain decided my legs weren't up to either task so I called it a day as I cruised by HQ. Turned in my race number, got some food, and sat to watch the rest of the race unfold while I not-so-silently fumed at myself for being so stupid. Leona joined me shortly afterwards.

The rest of the Wheelers didn't fare so well either. Damien spent a lot time bridging to the break, then cramped with a lap to go and couldn't hang onto them. Jim got near the front on the last lap with a top 10 in mind going up the final 100m climb to the finish line, but cramped and literally had to limp his bike over the line. Andy was nearly taken out by a rider who cut the final corner short and had to settle for a finish in the bunch. Mickael, the ghost Wheeler, sat in the break for some time then disappeared and was not seen again -- not sure if he even finished! At least the afternoon's E/1/2/3 race was a bit more successful, with Steve Saunders taking 2nd place, Luke Wallis 9th and James finishing in the pack.


Damien and Mickael in the break, photo from London Cycle Sport

Lessons learned:

-- always stay near the front! even more important for me in men's races than in women's, and especially important when coming up to a tailwind or downhill section. These guys outweigh me by more than 15kg, so even if I were the world's greatest descender I'd still have to work hard to keep up. To that end, Olympic rowing medallist Elise Laverick was also in the race and did a great job to finish in the bunch. She is quite a bit bigger and stronger than Leona and me though!

-- keeping to the right/outside is nearly always safer from a positioning perspective than the left/inside, particularly on uphills. And since the roadside is often soft and uneven by the edge, it's sometimes better from a safety perspective to be riding the white lane line in the middle, oncoming cars or not.

-- a fast recce lap means an even faster race and even more reason to STAY NEAR THE FRONT!

-- never assume that every lap will be the same, and certainly never count on the bunch slowing down, ever. Luck is something that happens unplanned. Planning for luck to come through is a sure way to fail.

-- sometimes life is just like that. Accept it, learn from it, move on to the next one. At least I didn't crash out.

A return to cycle racing

Week one of shorter, but more frequent posts to my blog. Pics are Jim's, as usual.

Being done with IMLP but with lots of time before IMH, I decided that I should get back into cycle racing again. My last race was over two months ago, and one thing I've noticed is how my 1-minute and 5-minute peak power have dropped, not to mention how rusty my "feel" on the bike has gotten at high speed, in tight corners, and around other bikes in the bunch. As well, my FTP could use some rebuilding after several weeks of Ironman taper and recovery. And cycle racing is just plain fun and a great workout! So with that in mind, I was off to Dunsfold Park this morning for the women's cat 3/4 Surrey League race.


Leona and I warm up in the shadow of a giant 747

Dunsfold Park is also serves as the test track for the TV show Top Gear. In fact, our finish line is the very same as the one for "Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car". Today's course around the airfield was slightly shortened and modified, turning us up the main runway (car tire donuts could be seen everywhere) and back down the outside. I never realised how massively wide an airfield runway is, and how long/large the paint patches have to be to read them from the sky. Of course, the crosswind meant that 60-odd cyclists were strung out in a line along the grassy edge of this 45-metre wide stretch of perfect tarmac, but it wouldn't be bike racing if someone wasn't riding onto the grass in a panic.


Dunsfold Park Aerodrome

Only five women showed up for the women's race, so we decided to join the men's 4th cat race instead. Probably less of a workout for me, but certainly better for getting the rust off my racing skills. Everything went well, with some attacks getting away but always been dragged back. About 25 minutes into the race, I found myself near the front on the sharpest corner and coming out of it I was in a group of five or six guys pulling pretty hard. I pulled through, a couple of guys sprinted by me and I realised we had a bit of a gap on everyone else. I kept riding hard, and just when I started to flag, someone new would bridge across to me, giving me a wheel to sit on and catch my breath for a few seconds. A hundred metres ahead of us was the strongest break of the day, four guys who were working well together. By now a few guys had managed to bridge over, so I decided to go for it and pedalled my heart out for several minutes trying to reach them. But it was like paddling in a strong upstream current towards a bridge: you can see it there, it's kind of getting closer, yet you seem to be making no quick headway. After a while, I realised the rest of the bunch had caught me and was happily sitting on my wheel as I put out 275 watts... yes, did I mention my race smarts were a bit rusty too?


Should have realised that I was already caught here, but my head's still down!

After that, I mostly hung in the bunch, tried to move up before the corners and accelerate smoothly out of them. A dead-flat course with a 90-degree corner at one end and a 135-degree corner at the other made more interesting by traffic cones narrowing the road and some large potholes; I was not in my element. We had dropped two of the women, leaving three of us in the main group when the last break was reeled in a few laps before the finish. The two ladies had been joined by a couple of guys who'd also been dropped, and they were working together as a tidy foursome. The only problem was, we lapped them just as we crossed the finish line for what I thought would be the bell lap (the lap counter had been displaying '3' two laps previous). And the bell rang, sort of. The lap counter now said 1. A few of us looked at each other and asked "so is this the last lap then?" And suddenly the whole bunch sped up, so we did too. Coming around the final sharp corner, I was on my teammate Leona's wheel but she had picked a bad line on the windward side of the course. Wheels were going by me on the leeward side, so I jumped onto one and started moving up the field. With 100m to go, I noticed the third woman ahead of me but catchable, though that meant giving it full-bore and standing up to sprint past her. Which I did... just in time to hear the bell ringing again, signifying the real last lap.


Ian (far left) sprints for second

Being so out of touch racing-wise, it didn't really occur to me that the bell was ringing until the bunch shot past me and a gap opened up. Leona rode up beside me and we both cursed the air blue over the confusion, and our own idiocy being caught out. Well, nothing to do but try to catch the bunch and latch back on. We both worked pretty hard up the runway straight, but by then my heart wasn't in it. Came around the final corner (again!) and Leona went for the sprint while I sat up and threw my hands in the air. Disappointing 3rd place for me, about 50th overall. Later I learned that the bell and lap counter had been for the group we were lapping (why those four riders should take precedence over the entire bunch is something I didn't get to ask the race organiser). Oh well, that's cycle racing I guess. Next time I'll be more aware of bells and riders.


Not happy at the finish!

The best part of the day, though, was hearing my Kingston Wheelers teammate Ian -- he of the strong steady wheel and awesome slipstream -- came 2nd overall and has now moved up to join Jim in the 3rd cats. Leona got enough points to move into 2nd cat and I'm now only 25 points away from 2nd cat myself. Not sure if it's worth really pursuing that promotion before the end of the season (rankings in regional women's cycle racing up to 1st cat seem somewhat arbitrary anyway, as points are given out for the top ten in every race and there are barely ten women in any given race), but it does give me a reason now to race at some of the other local circuits I haven't made tried yet, just to pick up points! Feels good to be back racing again.

All in a week of Ironman training

Last week was fairly unusual in that I raced four times in four days (five times in seven days if you count the previous weekend's Melbourne Team Series race). What started out as a fairly easy week on Monday with a beautiful evening run in Home Park became progressively harder as the week went on, culminating in a double-race Saturday (which marks my mid-season break from cycle racing so that I can focus on triathlon training), followed by a 22km run on Sunday with several intervals at half marathon pace. A tough week for sure, but it's all in a week of Ironman training.


Tuesday -- the long ride

The weather was beautifully sunny and hot, so Jim and I decided to give Hillingdon and Crystal Palace a miss -- and thankfully so, as there were big crashes at both races -- and do a 90km ride in the Surrey Hills with some of our favourite climbs instead. I set a surprising new best time on the Boxhill challenge with 6:38, knocking over 40 seconds off my previous best. It was only last summer that I was over eight minutes, and now I'm wondering when I will get below six!

Wednesday -- the running race

26.2 RRC, our running club, held its annual mile race on the local track. I've done a number of mile repeats in the past few months, but nothing could have prepared me for how hard four laps of the track was going to feel! Well, maybe some previous hard 400s and 800s would have prepared me... but nevertheless, after a warmup and some strides, I took to the start line with the rest of the ladies. At the gun we took off at an unholy pace, led out by one hardy soul running a 15-second first 100m until she crashed and burned, leaving me at the front of the pack to suffer alone.

1st lap: way too fast. There was no way I could hold this pace for the next three laps. 1:22
2nd lap: somewhat better. I was hoping to go under 6 minutes so this was about right. 1:30
3rd lap: despite my attempt to speed up on the back straight and drop the heavy-breathing women on my shoulder, it was actually slower and starting to hurt quite a bit now! 1:33
4th lap: after 150m I finally managed to lose everyone behind me and now it was just a race against the clock. The last 100m I felt I was gliding through the air, every stride was so long! 1:27 for a final time of 5:52, mission accomplished.

Once recovered, I figured I should make it a real workout, so I joined the men's race ten minutes later for a second mile at a more reasonable pace. I managed that one in 6:10 with much more even lap splits, leaving me amazed that a single second per 100m was the difference between a hard effort and an all-out gasping painfest. Clearly I need more track work on pacing if I'm ever going to run a good mile time!

The best part of the evening was the fun 100m dash we ran afterwards. I was transported back in time to when I was 10 years old and running at the Track and Field day at grade school. My time was surprisingly not much different either, around 13 seconds. I ran the entire 100m on my toes which felt amazing, though the next day my feet and calves were quite sore.


Thursday -- the handicap race

The Surrey League holds a series of handicap races over the summer and the circuit for this week's race was one we know pretty well. Having heard from teammates that handicap racing is the best workout around, Jim and I decided to give it a try. I was set off in the first group of 4th cat vets (40+) with teammate Ian, Jim went off in the second group of regular 4th cats and 3rd cat vets, teammate Andy was in one of the regular 3rd cat groups, and 1st cat Steve went off in the scratch group with a full 8 minutes to make up on my group. In fact, we had done an entire lap of the 3 mile circuit before Steve's group started, making it not only a physical but a psychological challenge for them to both catch us and then lap us to get in front!

We went off fast, and though we dropped several guys, I managed to hang on to the core group of half a dozen vets quite well. The difference in men's and women's racing became quite apparent, however; while I tried to do my part in the paceline, I found it ridiculously hard to pull through at 42km/h after sitting in the draft at that speed. In the end, I probably only did one out of every four turns that I should have, but I did manage to be less of a sandbagger than the guy who sat completely on the back and never took a single turn!

Nearly eight full laps went by before Jim's group -- led by Jim pulling the group along at the front, as usual! -- caught us. We all realised that this large group would be the front pack, as neither Andy's nor Steve's group were going to catch us in the two laps before the finish. I was hoping Jim could get a good placing and some points, so I stayed mid-pack to help him out where I could. On the last lap, right after Jim had reeled in an attack, another attack went up the hill and I jumped on the front to pull him back. That done, I settled back in the last km as Jim headed to the front to see what he could do in the uphill finish. Ended up a strong 4th place for him and 6 license points, while I cruised in at the back of the pack, picking up some Surrey League points as the first (and only!) female to cross the line. One more finish like that and Jim will be a 3rd cat himself.


Friday -- the swim TT

An easy day off the bike, and with my feet still feeling rough from the track work, I went to the pool instead. I'd been meaning to do a 1000m time trial to verify my threshold swim pacing and this was the day for it. After 1200m of warmup and drills, I hammered through 10x100m at 1:30 pace, maintaining good form throughout and finding the aerobic side of it surprisingly not taxing. Clearly my running and cycling fitness has clearly helped my swimming as well, as has the losing the extra 10 pounds! I think I'll do another one of these in a few weeks and see if I can't knock another second or two off my threshold pace, seeing how fast I can go before my form and technique gets too ragged. My swimming confidence is back, now I just need to get to the lake a few times with my wetsuit to burn the rust off my sighting skills.


Saturday -- the double race day

The morning dawned rainy but cleared up in time for the South East regional women's road race championships in the afternoon. With a field of only 30, it was a smaller race than what I've been doing lately, but still had its share of strong riders. Not a very hilly course and only 60km long, so next to no chance for me to get a podium place. However I did have two Kingston Wheelers teammates racing plus I knew there could be a break of half a dozen strong riders, so was hoping to join that if it happened.

Early on it was slow going, but on the second lap Charlie Blackman attacked hard -- she is so powerful when she does, she just takes off like a rocket -- and the rest of us gave chase. I knew Natalie from Twickenham would be my best bet either to reel Charlie in or to bridge over to her, so she and her Twickenham teammate and I set about working. Being the new and inexperienced and unorganised riders that we are though, we never managed to shed the rest of the bunch so after nearly a lap Charlie came back to us and we settled in for a few more laps with nobody really on the attack. My teammate Lise (a very good cyclist in her first race ever) turned out to be a bit of a wild card by racing very strongly, so when it became clear that it would end in a bunch sprint, I took to the front to drive the pace, figuring Charlie and Natalie would battle it out for the win and Lise would be up there as well. In the end, Natalie won it, Charlie came second, Lise picked up 7th and my other KW teammate Leona got 10th. I rolled in at the back of the bunch, feeling conflicted with my own poor result, but happy to see Natalie get a win and my teammates finish top 10.


Charlie (in white) before she attacked.
photo by Jim


Later that evening were the Smithfield Nocturne crit races in central London around ~1km of twisty city roads, including two sharp corners requiring some skill to navigate. The women's race was a last-minute addition to the elite race and men's support race, so I was keen to support it and help put on a good show for the 10,000 spectators lining the streets including a bunch of KW teammates on the "pub corner". Six or seven girls from the afternoon's road race were there as well, looking noticeably tireder than the bright fresh teenaged track riders and junior elites who were there to contest the win.

I wasn't sure how my legs would feel given the afternoon's race -- where admittedly I'd only done 15km of real work -- but after a quick recce lap behind the car, we lined up and started off fast. I took forever to get clipped in, and in that few seconds the main group was gone, leaving me to thread my way through riders as they got dropped off the back. Every lap brought me closer and closer, and having all that space to myself meant I could get used to the turns on the course, not that that helped my awful cornering technique much! About five laps into the race, I finally tagged onto the back of the main group which had about 15 riders in it. After a near miss on one of the worst corners -- skidding my front wheel and nearly hitting the barriers -- I eased off a bit and decided not to try to move up the group, sparing the other riders any close calls with my terrible cornering. This meant chasing on after that dodgy corner on every lap, but my legs turned out to be great. Since hard accelerations and sprints are not my forté I was pleasantly surprised to find that staying with the main group wasn't that hard at all.

About halfway through, a group of three girls attacked and left the rest of us behind, after which I just hung out at the back and enjoyed the atmosphere. The crowds at the start/finish line were banging on the boarded barriers every time we rode past, and on the opposite side the KWers were drinking more and more beer and cheering me on with gusto. Nineteen laps and 30 minutes after we started, we sprinted for the finish and then took a slow cooldown lap to the applause of the crowd. A very cool experience and lots of fun to be racing in front of so many spectators! And a great way to top off my racing season. Once the Ironman is over, I'll be back cycle racing but until then the road bike is taking a backseat to my new TT bike.


Giving a thumbs-up to the KWers on the pub corner.
photo by Jim


The new kit looks great!
photo by Jim


Taking a corner hard.
photo by Larry Hickmott for British Cycling

Pack Fill

Yesterday was my first road race ever, and I was more than a bit nervous. Given the dearth of women-only races around here, particularly on the open road, I thought I'd try one of the Surrey League's mostly-men cat 3 races. There were 65 starters, of which only 3 were women: me, and the two teenaged Trott sisters (Laura, a junior cat 2, and her older sister Emma, a cat 1 international racer). Somewhat intimidating to say the least, but with my new cat 3 status, perfect sunny and warm weather, and seven other Kingston Wheeler teammates joining me, it was the ideal setting for my first race. In fact, the race itself was put on by my club so there was lots of support on the road and at the HQ. Felt really good to see so many club members marshalling and helping out -- and taking photos like the one above (thanks to Luke Wallis' dad for that one!)

Road racing, I quickly learned, is a bit different from circuit racing. We did eight laps of a 6.5 mile course which was basically a rectangular route through country lanes with left turns to keep us from having to cross traffic. The roads can't be closed to cars, so even though the race was at 9:30am on a Sunday, we had our share of oncoming traffic (but thankfully no cars tried to overtake us!) English country roads are barely two car widths at best, and often more like one and a half with a dirt shoulders, which divided by two is not a lot of room to fit 60+ cyclists safely. Fortunately the roads we used were neither very winding nor very hilly, so the whole route had a broken centre line, allowing us to use the oncoming traffic lane to overtake each other.

I had gone into the race just wanting to finish in the pack and not get dropped, so I wasn't intending to attack or ride up front at all. But after the opening descent when I found myself close to the back, I soon realised that I'd have to work to move up unless I wanted to spend the entire race suffering from the accordion effect. Racing with men at this level, my strength is my ability to ride a long time at threshold, meaning a steady peleton pace would have to be pretty fast for me to get dropped. But my weakness as a sprinter became quite obvious as my legs started to tire from the constant braking and accelerating that happened with every corner, made worse by how far back I was. The only answer was to take my life into my hands a bit and ride in the centre of the road, overtaking riders when there were no cars coming, because the curbside meant getting boxed in on rough asphalt and going backwards.

By the 3rd lap I was trying pretty hard to move up 15-20 places in the pack on the uphill and headwind sections of the course so that when the section of long sweeping downhill with a tailwind came around, I could desperately cling to wheels as the 80+kg riders I'd passed on the hills zoomed by me at high speed. At one point, the group must have been trying to bring back an attack because the pace on the downhill crept up such that I was actually spat out the back for a minute or so until we reached the short climb at the beginning of the next lap where I could make contact again. Thankfully that was the only point where I felt like the thread was going to snap, and after that I worked even harder to maintain a good position in the middle of the group and anticipate accelerations and gaps opening so I wouldn't be caught out again.

From my vantage point 40-odd riders back and blocked by (erm, I mean nicely drafting behind) bigger riders, I had no idea whether a break had gotten away and if so, who was in it. Turns out that a group of seven riders went clear, which then later split into a group of three and a group of four, both of which held off the rest of us in the bunch by less than 20 seconds at the finish. The last lap was surprisingly mundane given how close the break really was, but I was happy just to finish upright and strong, even overtaking a few guys who misjudged the final steep hill and died 50 yards before the finish line. Many lessons learned for next time, but overall a great 2-hour workout in the sun with 65 of my closest training buddies.

Cat 3!

The cycle racing bug bit me a few years ago when I joined Hellas Triathlon and did Thursday night rides with the faster club members (mostly guys). After some warm-up drills and a main set of "hills" (in central Holland!) we always did something called Eigen Tempo (Own Pace) on the way home. It was always on the same 7km stretch of flat, straight and often windy country road, with a small S-bend jog in the middle over a bridge. Object of the exercise: ride as hard as possible in the group, and if you got dropped it became a dreaded solo ride at your Own Pace.

That first summer I got dropped before or at the bridge every single week except for the last, when I managed to stay with the lead group til the end -- I remember being ecstatic that day. By my third summer with the club, I was riding near the front for the whole 7km and sometimes off the front, and I had learned a whole bag of tricks to riding successfully in a group: sensing when riders were coming past me, anticipating accelerations and gaps opening up in front of me, tucking behind and beside others to stay out of the wind, and simply knowing my own limits and how hard I could go before I blew up.

Since moving to the UK, I've joined the Kingston Wheelers cycling club and found myself more and more drawn to the world of racing. Four races in the Imperial Winter Series at the Hillingdon circuit in December and January served to get my feet wet (results: nearly last place, last place, 16th place, and finally a breakthrough 8th place for 2 points towards my category upgrade). But while racing with a pack of men on a narrow short circuit was fun, I wanted to see how well I could fare against women. The Surrey League's Beginner's Race at MOD Chertsey yesterday was my first test. I wrote the report below for the Wheelers' news site, but if you don't want to read right to the end, here's the executive summary: I came in 2nd place in the sprint finish behind a seasoned vet, gathered 8 more points on my racing license, and upgraded to category 3! Only 40 more points to get to cat 2...

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The first Surrey League race on the weekend for ladies was billed as a "beginner's race", and the mild weather brought out more than 30 women to give it a go. Officially it was a 3rd/4ths race, but many of the ladies had next to no racing experience, so under the tutelage of some higher cat London Dynamos we set off in groups of 10 to do a few laps of easy through and off. Afterwards we massed for the race itself, 10 laps of the 2 mile MOD Chertsey circuit competing for both BC points and Surrey League points.

The 4th cat men set off a minute or so before we did, then we were off with our Dynamo mentor riding alongside and shouting instructions and encouragement. Having done a few Hillingdon races before, I was somewhat confused by this insistence on setting up an organised paceline in the early laps -- the wind wasn't strong and the small hills were disrupting the rhythm of the group, and on top of that, wasn't this supposed to be a real race where tactics and strategy played a role? Given that the Dynamos were well-represented and most of the rest of us had one or two teammates at best, I figured I had 2 choices: sit in and leave the work to them, or attack and get away.

On the second lap I chose the latter and managed to get 100m on the group, but my legs protested loudly and after a hard week of training I realised I probably couldn't stay away from the bunch for long. Instead we rode the next 3 laps together at a reasonable pace, interrupted only by the pace car forcing us to slow down as the 4th cat men streamed by, accompanied by strong warnings by our mentor that we'd be disqualified if we attempted to latch onto their group. After that, a few more small attacks split the bunch into a leading break of 10 or so, with the rest in a second group behind.

Passing the start/finish line for the bell lap, the pace increased substantially and I kept expecting an organised attack by the Dynamo team that never came. Instead some of the other ladies took to the front and drove the group forward. I marked every attack and was sitting about 5th in a group of 7 or 8 coming around the final corner when the eventual winner sprinted away. Everyone else followed and I had a sneaking suspicion that some girls had gone too hard too early, so I stuck to their wheels until 200m to go when I went out on my own. Someone else had the same idea because I could feel her creeping up beside me, but I geared down to my last cog and just gave it all I had to finish a strong 2nd place. Top speed was 50km/h at the sprint, which I think is the fastest I've ever gone on a flat with nobody in front of me! Overall speed for the race was 34.9km/h, with the first half averaging 33.6km/h and the second half 36.3km/h once the field split.

All in all a fun race and a different (but good) first experience racing with women instead of men. Next weekend is a similar event, and hopefully there will be some more KW jerseys out there with me! Looking forward to racing with teammates so that we can organise the attacks...

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