Started off with Jock Wadley. I was really looking forward to it. I knew the course well having ridden it lots at Christmas. Early in the race I was attacking and really aggressive, on reflection too aggressive. The early move went without me which was frustrating, but I then sat in the bunch and recovered after working super hard the first hour of the race. About 2 hours in Alex Richardson launched out the front I bridged over to him. A few others did too, and we started to eat into the gap of the breakaway. We caught a few guys who had been dropped out the back of the break after about 30 mins of chasing. By this time some of the riders in my chase group had dropped too. With 2 laps Richardson pushed the pace up the rise to the finish. I didn’t have the legs to follow and cracked trying to follow him. That was my race over, I didn’t have the power to get on the back of the peloton so was out the race and just rolled back to the HQ. A disappointing end to the race but a lot of positives and learning points as well. I believe If I get how I ride the race right I have the fitness to deliver a good result. Frustratingly I. got ill the following day which meant I was off the bike for a few days to recover.
The week after Jock Wadley was the March Hare classic at Lee Valley. It was the first time in ages I had been to the Olympic Park. It brought back really happy memories of my time on the apprentice programme, and it filled me with confidence going into the race. As the race started, I was unsure of how my legs would feel so I rolled around in the bunch for the first 20 or so mins. My legs still felt good and there was a move up the road that the peloton was doing nothing about, so I decided that it was time to attack and try to make my way to the front of the race. I attacked and a couple guys bridged up to me, we started to work together to try and bridge over to the lead group of 3 which had Rory Townsend and 2 guys from Richardson in it. The closest we got was around 20 seconds. The gap back to the peloton was up to about 45 seconds so there was plenty of motivation to keep working, especially when a small group came out of the main peloton and got within 10 seconds of us, I pulled some really hard turns to bring the gap back out to a more comfortable distance. My legs still felt good coming into the end, which was good, I did a decent sprint and came 4th which I was really happy with. I feel like I learned from Jock Wadley and made a big effort when it counted rather than lots of little ones which wore me out and meant I got dropped before the end.
There was supposed to be a race at Hillingdon last weekend, but it got cancelled because of a bad crash in the 3rd cat race. I hope everyone who came down in it isn’t as badly hurt as it seemed and that they all make a speedy recovery.
With the new U23 national series coming up I am excited to get stuck into that and try and land some big results. My ambition to become a professional cyclist drives me to train hard every session and I truly believe I am good enough to make it, I just need to put it together in the races that count.
