Team LDN Redbridge Crit, 4 June 2022

With the rest of my A-Level exams just around the corner, I thought it best to do a local race. So it was back to Hoghill for a 45 minute race! My race was combined with the Cat 3s and 4s, so there was a decent sized field, and it was a very strong one too.

It was quite windy so when I was on the start line I wanted to be more sheltered going into the first corner. Last time I raced at Redbridge (4 months ago!) I made the mistake of going first into the corner, which meant first into the headwind. My start wasn’t the best so I was slightly more to the back than I hoped, and I was stuck behind a rider who was more cautious of the corner. We had to sprint a bit more than others to stay in the bunch. As we got to the first climb I was in the middle of the bunch, ready for any attacks that may happen. Surprisingly, there were no attacks on the climb. This pretty much happened for the first 20 minutes of the race, the bunch was just keeping at a decent speed (not slow but not too quick either).

We got to the halfway point in our race, and a rider from Brother-UK LDN attacked. I expected this to happen as this rider had the support of her teammate to help her get away. I was positioned to the front so when this attack was made, it was a bit easier to follow as I was already sitting on this wheel. I was about 20 metres behind the rider that attacked, I got to the top of the climb and I looked behind and I could see the rider’s teammate behind me, telling her teammate to keep going with the attack, whilst everyone else who was in the bunch had dropped. I flicked my elbow and got the rider to go around and take a turn. I tried to get back on her wheel but I couldn’t quite stay on. I saw another couple of riders overtake me so I tried to get on to their wheels, but still no luck! One last rider overtook me but she was only slightly ahead. I set myself a target to try and catch up with the rider in front, this helped me to keep away from the riders who were slightly behind me. The rider in front of me got away so it was pretty much a 20 minute solo TT to the end. My legs were feeling quite tired at this point, but I just assumed that it was the last 3 weekends back to back. So I kept pushing and pushing, the riders behind me were out of sight which was a relief.

I was eventually given the 2 laps to go board, and it was such a lovely sight! My legs were hurting, my lungs were burning, it was getting hotter and the wind was getting stronger! Next time up the climb, I was given the finish flag and I got lapped by the leader just on the finish line. It was nice knowing I didn’t have to do another lap in the heat! I was happy to finish 7th after a hard few weeks of racing.

This race wasn’t my best race nor my worst, but I’m really happy to see how much progress I have made over the past 4 months! I am happy that I gave it a ‘good go’ in trying to follow the break and managed to get away from a couple of riders!