Bovingdon Bomber Crit, 13 Mar 2022

It was my first time racing at Bovingdon since last summer, so I knew that this was going to be a fast race. I decided to try a longer warm up to see if this will improve how I race. I completed 25 minutes on the rollers and then did a few laps of the circuit to practice the hairpin.

On the start line, I positioned myself on the front, and when the whistle was blown, I had a good start. Coming into the hairpin I was 4th out of 23 riders, I just needed to keep to the front. The rider on the front attacked and was really putting the pressure on when we were only 200 metres into the race! Everyone started to overtake me at this point, and somehow I was right at the back. I weren’t sure how (perhaps wrong gear choice?!) but there was a couple of other riders in the distance that had dropped off as well. I was desperately chasing down the riders in front, trying to get a rider to work with me and shelter me for a little while.

On the second lap there was a small crash on the hairpin due to a rider’s pedal hitting the floor, which actually benefited me as the riders I was chasing had to slow down as they were caught behind the crash. As I got round the hairpin I continued to chase down the rider in front and successfully caught up with her after half a lap.

We started working together trying to pick up riders in front. Two laps later a rider behind us caught us and we started working as a trio. The rider who recently joined us started to put the pressure on when she took a turn. The rider I originally worked with had dropped and half a lap later, I also got dropped. I had to keep chasing solo, as there was no one behind me. Again, like in most races I have completed so far this season, I was in no man’s land!

I decided to just ride solo (TT style) and see how the race went from there. Little did I know was that I was going to be riding solo for the remaining 30 minutes of my race. But it started raining when we had 3 laps to go which made the race more interesting. The hairpin got more and more slippery.

At the end of the race, I finished around 14th out of 23 riders on the start line. I am happy with this result considering the line up was really strong. Next time I will work on better gear selection, and will keep on trying to stick in with the leaders for longer! :)

Amy Harvey