ELV Hoghill Crit, 13 Apr 2024

My second race of the season was at Hoghill, and it was a much warmer race than the first race of the year. Following on from a good race at the March Hare classic, I had an idea of where my form would be going into this race, however it was also the first time in a while where I’ve done some race efforts on a climb. As always, my aim was to be in the front group, particularly when the race splits up on the climb, and be the first one to sprint from the group at the finish. The race started with me having a good start and being first into the corner. For the first 20 minutes of the race, there was an attack on every single lap on the climb, by the same rider. My positioning was relatively good, and I thought from my experience racing on this course several times, that the pace will be controlled, the attacks would be less frequent and the rider consistently attacking would burn their matches quite early in the race. On this one particular lap, I found myself a little too far back, and unfortunately for me tthe rider who had been attacking quite frequently, had also managed to split the group. It was just my luck that on that lap, I was stuck behind a rider who couldn’t quite hold the other riders’ wheel. I went around this rider and tried a solo effort to catch up to the next three riders that distanced from the rest of the field. The rider who put in a big attack managed to get away solo, and to my surprise she managed to stay away on her own for the whole race! Luckily I could see the other two riders in the distance, I tried to continue doing a solo effort to catch up to these two riders in front, while also trying to stay away from two riders behind me.

With a strong headwind, and me not being the best at TT efforts, I unfortunately didn’t catch up to the riders who were in second and third place. I could see the riders in 5th and 6th place catch up to me, so I tried to reserve as much energy as I can for the finish and hope to finish 4th. We became a group of three with three laps to go. My aim at this point was to not do too much work and be the first one to start the sprint for the finish. On the last lap I was positioned at the back of the group, not exactly ideal, but previously when I won on this course, I won from sprinting from the back of the group (which was also a group of 3), and it worked, so I could only hope the same thing will work. We got to the climb, and just before the steepest part of the climb I launched my attack, and as I overtook the riders, I could hear one of the riders shouting attack as I went past (something I am not a fan of riders doing). At this point, I had to just fully commit and try and stay away. With about 10 metres before the finish, one of the riders rolled me in the sprint, and I crossed the line in 5th place.

I finished the race both happy and obviously a little frustrated with the mistakes I made, which did affect my result. However, I knew that I emptied the tank and I knew I left everything on the circuit. Some lessons learnt, but I managed to finish 5th/10, so I managed to grab 5 more points, and it’s another race under the belt :))

Amy Harvey