Ryedale Grand Prix National A Road Race, 20 Aug 2023

Ryedale GP was my first ever National A race, which is pretty much the highest level of racing in the UK for road. My line up had 120 riders (the largest field I’ve ever raced against) which contained about 3 world tour riders and 10-15 UCI conti riders, so the quality of the field was incredible. As it was my first Nat A race, I had no expectations of how I would get on, how the race will unfold so I went into this race with mindset of simply just having fun and using the race as a learning experience.

On the Saturday, I did a recce of the big loop (20km a lap!) and it was obvious that this race was going to split up on the first lap. There were so many climbs, two of which stood out the most as they were long, draggy and steep. The rest of the climbs were shorter and didn’t require much recovery afterwards. Something else that stood out to me was the speed bumps in the last 100 metres (3 big ones) so that was going to be interesting.

The next day was the big day. After completing a good 20 minute warm up, my legs felt good. This was until we had to wait around 30 minutes because while all the other riders were ready for the ‘ceremony’, the medics hadn’t arrived yet, and for obvious reasons we couldn’t start until they arrived. We eventually lined up and I managed to squeeze my way into the front half of the group on the start line. We rolled out and had a short neutralised. The pace was controlled until we approached the climbs, where the hard work begun. I was hanging on to the back, but by this point, about 10 riders were already dropped. I managed to continue to hang on for the rest of the first lap.

On lap 2, I lost the main group on one of the climbs, and I luckily managed to get into a group of 10 other girls, including 3 of my teammates. The group worked well and we caught another group of 5 riders in front. I managed to get myself into a rhythm and we paced the climbs quite well, which helped with my recovery. We continued working together really well.

After the second lap of the big circuit, we then did 3x laps of the smaller circuit. This contained the same big first climb as the bigger circuit. We continued working really well and were rewarded by catching another group of 10 riders in front. So we were now a group of around 25 riders by this point - other riders in our group had been dropped. We were working well and everything was paced well, although, some riders attempting to do a chaingang in this large group was a bit questionable, but it kept everyone sharing the work. By this point we were over 2 hours into the race and I could start to feel myself getting quite fatigued, so I just wanted to stay in the group as long as I could and keep refuelling. I survived 2/3 shorter laps with this group until I was dropped as the group went over the top of a climb.

I tried to solo TT my way round to the group or at least keep them in sight but I completely emptied the tank. Consequently I was pulled out of the race on the bell lap. Although it was a little frustrating to be so close to completing my first National A race and being pulled with only 16km to go, I was really proud of how I rode. I completely emptied the tank and I found myself in a very strong group with some quality riders from some strong, established teams (such as Pro-Noctis, Das Handsling, Hutchinson Brother UK). I felt like I learned a lot and I enjoyed the race, despite the course being so brutal. I was also surprised with how long I stayed in the race.

Amy Harvey