I was looking forward to racing my first 90km road race since September last year. It was even better for me as the race was on some of my training roads, so I was familiar with a couple of the roads on the course and with the terrain. The race was 9 laps of a 10km circuit which was quite flat, apart from one very short climb - unfortunately not steep enough to break up the peloton. There were also two primes on laps 3 and 7, so I knew that they were a possible opportunity to put the pressure on, in an attempt to reduce the bunch.

There was 40 of us on the start line, and I knew I wanted to keep a good position in the race, as my plan was to stick in the bunch for as long as possible. The first lap was slower than I expected it to be (averaging about 19mph), so everyone was still together. The following 3 laps were a lot quicker, and there was a few attacks and counter attacks going on. The peloton also became quite sketchy too, especially as one lady beside me, who was trying to move up the bunch had caught her handle bars with mine - luckily both of us just about managed to hold it together without coming down!

On to lap 4, I sadly got dropped from the peloton and I joined a smaller group just behind the peloton. There were about 7 of us working together and we decided to do a chaingang to catch some of the other dropped riders that were just up the road from us. We lost of a couple of riders in our chaingang, but we did manage to catch up with a couple of other dropped riders. The chaingang became quite disrupted as one of the riders refused to go through the chaingang to take a turn, while another rider went too hard on their turn and tried riding away from the group. Whilst the chaingang was losing its form, I was analysing the final kilometre as I wanted to be the first one to start sprinting from our group for the finish. I’m not the quickest sprinter and the finish straight doesn’t suit my strengths so I was deciding which point on the course would be better for me to go (about 300 metres from the finish).

Unfortunately my plan for the finish didn’t work. With about 2 laps to go, we were informed by a marshal who was at the 1km to go sign, that we were finishing on that lap. At this point I was positioned at the back of our small group of 6, so I knew that I would probably have to sprint from the back and go the longer way round to the finish. The pace was quite high in the final kilometre and I managed to make up a place on the small drag just before the finish. One of the girls started the sprint quite early (about 500 metres from the finish). I managed to overtake one of the girls and come third in our group’s sprint. However the finish was a little confusing - we were given the 1 lap to go bell and sign, so eased up a little as I thought we were going to do another lap. But, it turns out we did finish that lap!

It was a little annoying to have that confusion for our finish, as I feel like I could have emptied the tank more effectively at the finish. However, I am happy with how I rode, considering it’s been about 9 months since I’ve done a 90km road race.

Amy Harvey

Lee Valley CC Road Race, 16 Jun 2024

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