BUCS 3-up Team TT, 18 Mar 2023

BUCS Team Time Trial wasn’t a race I had really considered doing as Cambridge Uni CC has never had the numbers to put out a women’s team, however this year we managed to put out two! My team (Miranda Clements, Zoe Burrell and I) were keen to get in a lot of practice, especially considering that Miranda and myself hadn’t spent that much time on a TT bike. The training was so much fun, we tuned our rotations making sure that they were smooth and close to the wheel, and practiced pacing hills.

Whilst we had trained a decent amount we were a little apprehensive before the race as the course was quite sketchy for a TTT. The first section had a very steep sharp turn into a pot-holed narrow bridge before a steep climb. After a slightly questionable start, we got into formation well and hit the first descent with good balance between speed and caution. We paced our hills well and I was especially pleased with our pacing of the longest drag as we kept our turns short and didn’t go too far into the red. We took our corners well cleanly taking sections where teams before had crashed out. In fact, we were incredibly pleased with the first ~30km of our race as we were smooth and controlled. The issues came in the last section of the race, an unexpectedly strong headwind, a repeat of the first sketchy descent and the final steep climb exposed differences in the group which made us break apart a bit. Whilst my strengths lie in technical descents, I struggled to hold the power into the headwind but was happy with my push up the last steep climb. However, we were a little unlucky with Zoe’s gearing as she hit a pot-hole which dropped her chain into the little ring and causing her to spin out at an inopportune time. We slowed and she put in a strong pull to get back on quickly. However, getting back up to pace put Zoe and I into the red whilst Miranda was having a really strong day and still felt good which made the last stretch tough. We did manage to put in a little sprint at the end to fan our finish which was beneficial as the time is based off the 3rd rider across the line. We finished with a time of 58:01 which put us in 2nd place out of a strong field of riders. We were incredibly pleased with our results as we wanted to be in the top half so really didn’t expect to come away with a BUCS medal!

Maddie Angwin