Double Welsh Champ
The weekend started off with the Time Trial on the Saturday and the Road race following on the Sunday. Both days used the same course, immediately up hill out of the HQ.
A naturally windy course and what seemed to be more up hill than down. I wasn’t expecting to finish in a fast time.
At the start line I could still see three people who had started in front of me at minuet intervals. An up hill start and still in sight after 3 minuets really didn’t promise for a quick time. Seconds till I was to set off and the heavens open…. great!
Luckily the rain didn’t last too long, a 20mile loop that I finished in a time of 57:36.452. Bit of a slog round.
The road race was a little different to normal as the women we racing with the vet men. This just changes the racing slightly as the men tend to dictate the pace of the race. After a very long neutralised zone the pace didn’t increase as much as I expected to. On the approach to the bottom of the climb I moved right up to the front to give myself the best chance of keeping up with the men up the climb. A couple tried to escape before the bottom of the climb without much luck. As I thought they began to race up the climb slightly above the pace I was able to ride at. This left me stuck in the middle of two groups, the front group which was highly unlikely I would catch and a small group behind me. I decided to wait for the group behind me as with still a long way to the end of the race. It wouldn’t be smart to try and ride by myself for the remainder of the race, especially with how windy it was. A nice group of 6 of us worked well until we got into the head wind.
The head wind section saw a couple of men try to attack the group. We stayed together until the climb again. I road at the pace of the men with the other 2 women in the group. The group split in half, came back together. The men started attacking so I just road at my own pace. Choosing to press on over the top of one of the climbs I left behind the other women to catch the men and go straight past. They then sat on my wheel to attack me, I continued to ride at my pace catching them once again. They sat on my wheel until about 300 meters to go where they again attacked me for the finish line.
It was nice to be able to take the win in both the road race and Time trial Champs. I now am the proud owner of two Welsh Championship Jerseys!
If anyone is wondering where my Welsh connection come from it is my Mum. She was born in Wales and has represented Wales multiple times in Road Racing.
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