Junior RR National Champs

The race was up north (Capernwray) and was planned to start at 9.30am on Sunday, so ofcourse, we had to go up the day before! Though it wasn't a bad thing, Dad and I went and road the course (in the sun!) so i could see what pain was to come and to have a go at the massive hill.



We arrived in the morning to find rain, lots of clouds and a small village hall hidden down the bottom of a hill, lovely! And then after the warm up i managed to puncture my tub (for the 3rd time in 3 weeks, not impressed!) so it was back to the training wheels for this race..

Anyway the race eventually got underway and after some dodgy stops and starts in the neutralized section it stopped raining! Everything pretty much stayed together for the most part of the first lap, until we hit the hill.. This is when the split happened and i wasn't best positioned on starting the hill and had to make a major effort to get back up to where i wanted to be. This hurt, alot! By the top I was sat with about 10 or so other riders and we tried to get back the front few, but this never happened.

Basically we stayed as a group for the next 4 and a half laps, gaining a few that had dropped off the front few but nothing much happened. I just focused on saving as much energy as possible, but that hill did hurt rather alot! Eventually we made it to the last time up the hill (finish at the top), & with 4 other juniors in the group and the 2nd and 3rd places still up for grabs i had to get on with it! The pace kept picking up and i just dug in and came round quite a few people in the last 100m or so to get 3rd Junior and 11th overall. And i'm not quite sure where all the energy came from but it helped!

I was dead happy with this result and didn't really expect it, so a pretty good weekend!