August started with the disappointment of not being able to go on holiday to Mallorca. I was really looking forward to a break away from the craziness of racing every week. The plan was to ride and have lots of fun and be mentally refreshed coming into 2 big stage races. However, the holiday got cancelled and my plans changed.
The positive of the holiday being cancelled was that I could race in the cadence junior national.
The day started off very welsh, it was pretty cold for august and raining. This made warming up on rollers more of a challenge as I was sliding all over the place. Once the race started there was a crash in the neutral, so it was extended for slightly longer than expected. When the flag dropped there was a flurry of attacks. After making the mistake of riding too hard to early at the bath RC national and paying the price a little in the race later on when it mattered, I sat in the wheels and bided my time waiting for later in the race to use my energy more effectively. The breakaway formed pretty early and got up to a 3 min gap with 2 laps to go. It was at this point I started to attack to try and bridge to the breakaway. I got away with Max and Will and we caught the remains of the breakaway just before the climb with one lap remaining. Up the climb I launched an attack up the hill to try bridge to the front of the race. Only max was able to follow me. We worked together to try bridge to the front of the race. The closest we got to them was 55 seconds. When we started to bridge it was over 2 min. Coming into the final, I ended up leading max out. This wasn’t where I wanted to be so I just road as hard as I could up the hill in the hope max couldn’t come round me. He came round me, and I finished 6<sup>th</sup>. My best result in a junior national. I was really pleased with the race. But I missed the break which was frustrating.
The Tuesday after the race I started to feel abit rough and by Thursday I felt awful. I was ill for 10 days which meant 10 days no riding. This has messed up the rest of the junior road season. I was ill on Mendip’s weekend and have only just started to ride again. This meant I pulled out of wales. This was really tough but with cyclocross starting soon I had something to focus on.
I am really looking forward to racing cyclocross this winter, it will be more or less a new discipline for me. The last time I raced cross was when I was u12. My plan for cross this winter is to keep it fairly low key have lots of fun and see how it goes. I am planning on racing most of the Wessex league. I have 2 more road races planned with Southampton crit next weekend and a National B in Chelmsford a couple weeks later. The only other non-muddy races I have coming up are the National Circuit TT Champs and the Newport GP track race.
