Fakenham Criterium, 17 Apr 2022

Easter Bank Holidays always means that I’m doing a criterium race on closed roads. This year I was back at the Fakenham Criterium for the first time in 4(?) years! My race had a very strong line up including the Elite Crit National Champion, so you can imagine how hard this race was going to be.

After completing a solid 20 minutes warming up on the rollers I joined the other ladies and did a few sighting laps of the course. I needed to remind myself what the course was like, which I’m glad I did because I forgot how tight those corners were!

I had a good start and was somewhere in the top 10 going into the first corner, then I moved up a couple of positions before entering the second corner. After we went through the second corner, one elite rider started to blow up the race by launching a large attack on the drag. The field strung apart a lot quicker than I expected, especially after another rider (the Nat Champ) counter-attacked and rode away from the field…she was never caught! The first 3 laps were fast, furious and chaotic to say the least. There were riders strung out everywhere, lots of attacks, crashes, a rider was sick…it was just chaos! I did lose contact with the bunch but there was a rider in front of me, so I used her as a target to catch up to her and then either work with her or ride away and catch up with the next rider.

Alexander Naylor

I caught up with her on the 4th lap into the race and we started working together. I noticed that she was a lot more confident and technically better at riding through the chicanes just before the sprint finish. We worked together and did this for the rest of the race. I tried an attack in the middle of the race, on the drag, but this wasn’t a success so we carried on working together. It wasn’t until the last lap that I tried to attack again on the drag. I knew that I needed to be at the front going into the chicane to have a chance of winning the sprint between the two of us. This ended up being a mistake as it turned out I attacked too early and practically gave the other rider a lead out! However, lessons were learnt and I did my best.

The race overall was fast, very technical and crazy! The course didn’t suit me but it was nice to get some crit racing under my belt ready for the upcoming Tour Series!

Amy Harvey