I was really looking forward to racing the Dave Peck Memorial Road Race, the first round of the British Women’s Team Cup. As I’ve already had a road race under my belt, I knew what I needed to work on. Plus, I’ve been doing a lot of training since the last road race, so physically, I was expecting to perform better too.

I did a warm up with my teammates and we went through our team talk, which made me feel more determined for this race. We had a 2 mile neutralised ride to get to the race course, so I used this as an opportunity to improve my bunch positioning before racing kicked off.

Our race begun and I was positioned in the top half of the race. There was an attack as soon as we started started, although, this was a very short and was on a flat road, so this didn’t work. The pace was fairly quick and after we exited each corner/ roundabout, there was an attack. At times it was quite sketchy so I had to be alert at all times.

We approached our second lap, the headwind was getting stronger and people started getting dropped. I knew on this lap I needed to take a gel or eat an energy bar. In my last road race I didn’t eat enough and ended up running out of energy too quickly, so I didn’t want to make the same mistake. We approached just after the feed zone and the race was suddenly stopped. The Comms were concerned with riders riding on the right hand side of the road and warned us that our race may get cancelled if riders continued to do so. That has never happened to me at a race before so that was a very strange moment, but I took this opportunity to refuel.

The race was neutralised for a couple of minutes and then resumed. The pace seemed to have calmed down a bit, with hardly any attacks. This continued for a few laps, where certain teams controlled the pace at the front, and most of the pack stuck together.

It wasn’t until around 4.5 laps later where there was an attack and the bunch completely strung out. I lost contact with the group, a couple of riders behind me overtook and I tried to sit on them. I managed to get pulled along and back on to the group. After going up the drag, I lost touch with the group again and I couldn’t get back on. I only had 2 laps to go so I decided to ride as hard as I could on those last 2 laps. I managed to catch up with a rider in front and we worked together for the remainder of the race. With 200 metres to go I did an attack on the uphill finish and I managed to get a large gap ahead and win the sprint out of the two of us. This gave me an extra point for my team in the team series which is always a bonus!

I am happy with how I performed on Sunday. I was feeling strong until the last couple of laps, so it’s good to see my usual self coming back quite quickly. Most importantly I remembered to eat more on the bike which definitely helped, even though I ended up spilling most of my gels down my leg and handle bars!

Amy Harvey

Dave Peck Memorial Road Race, 27 Mar 2022

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