Duncan Murray Wines Women's Team Series Road Race, 30 Jul 2023
Sunday was another round of the Women’s Team Series in Naseby. I raced on this course last year but I just couldn’t remember much of what the course was like- apart from the hilly finish and where I crashed. My team had a numerical advantage as there was about 8 of us. This meant we had an ‘A’ team who were able to race with the OnForm Jersey and a ‘B’ team that races for an unestablished team- which is the team I rode for. This meant that regardless of where I placed, I wouldn’t score any points for my team. So I was just glad to be able to get a race in. My teams plan was to sit towards the front of the race get into a breakaway if there will be one and not let Frankie from Das-Handsling or Ruth from Hutchinson get away, as they’re crazy strong riders.
After the warm up we all gathered around waiting for the rider briefing. But as we gathered around, we noticed that the comms hadn’t even done the rider briefing for the men’s race that was meant to start 10 minutes prior to ours. After about 15 minutes of hanging around we were finally set off for our neutralised ride. Two minutes into the neutralised we were immediately told to stop - a rider had an issue with their pedal. So another 10 minutes of hanging around, while my team manager who was also part of neutral service, swapped bikes, made sure saddle height was correct for the rider etc. By this point I had already had enough with the drama of this race (the race hadn’t even started). Once the neutralised restarted, it only lasted 1 more kilometre and my legs were pretty much stale after all the hanging around. The first lap was probably my best lap, the pace was more controlled, my legs eventually were able to warm up a little and my positioning was better. I also found out the hard way that this course actually isn’t flat and rolling, it had about 3 climbs on there (not sure how I forgot that), although these climbs weren’t anything too drastic.
The second lap things were slowly going a bit wrong. Positioning weren’t great, legs weren’t working and the pace was crazy. I luckily had a teammate to tow me around and look after me. Mentally I was telling myself I was already halfway but that only helped so much. As we came on to our third lap ( 1 lap to go) the bunch was broken up a bit. I found myself with a small group of 8, including 2 of my other teammates Georgia and Laura, as well as a LDN Academy rider, Tofauti rider and some from other teams I’ve never even heard of. My teammate Georgia attacked to try and bridge to the 2 FTP racing team girls who were about 10 seconds in front. Although I would have liked to have joined her and bridge to the next pair with her, I knew that it would be wrong to chase a teammate so I could only hope another rider joined her so I could tag along. Unfortunately no one else joined, but my teammate managed to bridge to the pair in front. My other teammate also attacked but the whole group followed. A rider in front of me lost the wheel so I had to go the long way and try to get back on, sadly I also lost the group but I kept chasing hard. I caught up with my teammate Laura and we were not far off from the group in front. The original group we were with had bridged to the pair in front. So there was about 10 of them working together while me and Laura were desperately trying to chase back on. Unfortunately we didn’t have the legs get back on so we worked together until the comms on the motorbike stopped our race and pulled everyone into a random Cul-De-Sac. As the men’s race was on at the same time as ours, we’ve had to be pulled into a side road to allow all the men to overtake.
Again, it felt like we spent loads of time hanging around- bit annoying but at least we’re in the same boat. We were told by the comms that the race would once be neutralised and the relevant groups and riders will be set off in relevant intervals based on the time gap between the rider and leader & peloton. However the complete opposite happened, everyone was set off at once in the neutralised (which only lasted a couple of hundred metres). The group that was only a seconds in front of myself and my teammate were allowed to join the leaders again, despite being minutes behind them. At this point, myself and my teammate has burnt all our matches to even keep up in the neutralised let alone continue racing.
The race ended up with myself, my teammate Laura, and a Tofauti rider to work as a 3 until the finish. We were working well together, until the final climb where I managed to breakaway a little from our trio. It was quite a relief to see we finished a lap earlier as I had nothing left in the tank.
Unfortunately there weren’t many positives from this race, and the constant disruption from start to the end didn’t make things any better. It was quite frustrating to have had my best National B result to having one of my worst National B result on the same course but a year apart. However, lessons were learned and it’s always nice to get another race under the belt!
Amy Harvey