Tavistock Wheelers Sporting (Hilly) 25mi TT, 19 Mar 2022

On a sunny Saturday afternoon, my boyfriend and I headed to Tavistock for the first race of the Devon Cup. A race out of my comfort zone for many reasons: I knew I would know no-one there (most of my club are off cycling round Majorca at the moment!), it was far enough away that we would need to go stay overnight, and it was one of the busiest roads I'd have raced on (having only raced B road TTs previously). However, knowing that endurance and hills are two of my strengths, the course length and profile looked too good not to try. I was feeling pretty hopeful and had a fairly ambitious target time in my head.

Unfortunately, on the day the weather pushed it much further outside my comfort zone. I'm really scared of crosswinds - I normally refuse to ride a road bike if the wind speed is >20mph or the gusts are >30mph because I don't feel safe. Down in Tavistock the wind gusts were >35mph; up on the moor they were much stronger. I cried 10k into the TT when I reached the open moorland, because I was terrified about having to go back down again. I ride shallow rims (and a road bike) and, even then, every time I passed a gap in a wall I had to really brace myself just to stay on the bike. It didn't leave much mental energy for pushing myself, and when I got back down from Dartmoor the flood of emotions that went through my head were 1) relief I'd made it down safely followed almost immediately by 2) disappointment when I lapped my Garmin and saw 1:14:something.

I've always been a fairly ambitious (overambitious?) person - if I was to give an honest answer to that "what is your biggest weakness?" job interview question it would be that I have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew in an effort to prove myself (mostly to myself). Up until recently, I never saw that as a bad thing; I thought that never being entirely satisfied with anything I did just meant that I will always have a pretty strong drive to improve myself. However, in the past year I've started to realise that that maybe isn't the healthiest attitude. I know a few women my kind of age at work and also through cycling who are (at least!) as driven as I am, and I've noticed that they are able to celebrate their successes as well as spot places for improvement.

So, in the spirit of celebrating the small wins along the way, some things I am genuinely proud of are: 1) turning up to give it a go, despite the forecast and 2) keeping control of my head and staying (relatively) calm throughout so I could concentrate on safely controlling the bike (I am fairly sure I could not have done this a year ago).

I was lucky enough to finish 2nd woman, and 1st woman from Devon, which means I am currently top of the rankings for the Devon Cup. I'm not sure I'll stay there long once we move into fast and flat TT season… but I'll give it a go!

Alice Jane Lake