The second round of the women’s team series was held in Banbury, a course everyone knows for ‘that’ climb. I did this race last year so I knew what to expect and how the race would play out. After only recently getting back into training due to having norovirus, I had no expectations of getting a big result, especially with yet another strong line up. So I went into this race with the mindset of enjoying it and see how long I could stay with the leaders for.

The first lap started off quite controlled, there was one fixed pace after the neutralised, and it was around a Z3 pace, so everyone still had fresh legs. I couldn’t get into the front third of the group until after we came off the busy road. But when we got to the bottom of the first climb, I was sitting in the top 15, a decent position to hold at a crucial moment in the race! I saw some Hutchinson riders and a couple of Pronoctis riders moving to the front and started to put the pressure on. I managed to stay with them for half of the climb, but I couldn’t keep up with their pace for the second half of the climb. The group was pretty strung out at this point. There was about 4 or 5 riders off the front in a breakaway, and then around 30 riders in the peloton, and another 10 riders in the chase group. I was in the second chase group where there was another 10 of us. I luckily had 3 of my teammates with me and my other teammate was in the chase group in front. The first lap I struggled to get into a rhythm and my asthma and hayfever didn’t really help either. But my legs still felt good, so I knew to just stay with this group and keep chasing in hope to catch up with the riders in front.

The second lap I felt back to normal, and we began to do a chaingang. This was working out well, and was a lot easier to do with 10 riders there. During the chaingang, my teammates and I took in turns to skip some of the chaingang turns to keep our legs as fresh as possible. Then I returned to the chaingang and my teammate then skipped taking turns in the chaingang. I found this helped me and allowed me to recover for a bit longer. When we were on the climb I felt better and more settled in to a rhythm. Our group split on the climb and I found myself in the front end of the split. The group quickly rejoined as the course flattened. We continued working in a chaingang to keep the group working.

On the third lap I noticed some riders were also skipping turns on the chaingang. I knew that they were fatigued so I knew I had to go hard on the climb and get a gap. When we approached the climb one of the riders in the group was putting the pressure on, so I followed. When we got to the top of the climb there was only 4 of us so we decided to keep pushing on and try and stay away. I luckily had 2 of my other teammates with me so this gave me an advantage. We did a chaingang at a faster pace but we were soon joined by our other group members. We continued to keep going hard until the end. My aim was to help give a lead out for my teammate as she is more of a powerful sprinter in the group. But with 1km to go a rider attacked and I was unfortunately at the back of the chaingang when this happened. Three of my teammates were at the front, but it meant me and 4 other riders had to keep chasing hard to try and catch up. I managed to catch the group with 100 meters to the finish, but I already burnt my matches. However, I got 3rd out of my group’s sprint, from 10 which was something to be pleased with considering a solid 1km of constant chasing.

I’m reasonably happy with how my race went, after not being able to get into a rhythm on the first lap. But I managed to put some team tactics into a race situation which was a good learning experience!

Amy Harvey

Banbury Star Road Race, 21 May 2023

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