Woking
With two rounds to go the team was sitting in 4th, 8 points behind VC St Raphael in the overall team standings, and keen to make up that gap. With four girls on the start line, each had a rider to mark, and a clear objective – get points off VC St Raphael! The course has a bit of a climb and a few challenging corners, the group split fast, as usual, Lou was placed strongly in the front group, while Natalie, Sarah and V were battling for places as riders started to drop off the back. Both Natalie and Sarah ended up sat a little off the back of the group, Natalie put her race face on and got back up into the race, while Sarah and V both settled into smaller bunches to try to make up some ground. It was a fast race with lots of attacks, and a few crashes (wishing a speedy recovery to Lydia who came down pretty hard), and Natalie and Lou both managed to stay upright and finish in 12th and 10th respectively, edging out both VC St Raphael riders in the lead group. Sarah finished 2nd in the sprint in the chasing group, getting 18th overall, her first top 20 result of the series, but unfortunately one point behind Adel Tyson-Bloor of VC St Raphael, who managed to get a bit of a gap in the last corner and put in a fantastic sprint to hold onto her lead. V finished just out of the points but ahead of her marked riders, so a successful race for everyone, and 5 points gained back from VC St Raphael’s advantage.
Standings
after round 4:
Team
4th overall
Lou 6th
Overall
(we
found out you have to do every round to get into the individual standings so
unfortunately, despite all her points, Natalie is no longer in the standings)
Stoke on Trent
Stoke was the last stage of this years Johnsons
Health Tech Grand Prix and also the first city to host a stage of the womens
race. With the men doing their TTT in the afternoon, and the girls travelling
down by train instead of in the car, there was a bit of a party atmosphere as
the morning was spent sat in a lovely coffee shop at the train station and then
another in the city centre watching the racing, rather than at the HQ warming
up and signing on as usual. It stayed dry for the race but with a very strong
wind it looked like it would be a tough race to end on, and lots of tired legs
with only a day to recover after Woking. With Natalie tied up at work we had
only 3 girls in the race to VC St Raphael’s 5, and knew it would be a big ask
to get the team into 3rd overall. Lou as usual kept herself out of
trouble by lining up right at the front for the sighting lap, a good tactic in
this case as a crash in the second last corner more or less took half the field
out of the race before it had even started. Unfortunately V and Sarah were
behind it, Sarah got past quickly and chased hard but couldn’t get back across
to the race, V was stuck for much longer and also ended up in no mans land –
not a good place to be when the wind is threatening to blow you into the barriers!
Helen Wyman attacked and made a huge gap on the bunch, staying away for the
rest of the race. Lou also had good legs and was keeping things interesting for
the lead group, attacking and staying away for several laps before getting
reeled back in, and then attacking some more. Wyman took the win, with Laura
Massey in 2nd and Jessie Walker 3rd, and Lou 14th
in the bunch sprint. Meanwhile in the chasing group, Sarah did a bit of
attacking too, getting a good gap on the rest of the chase, but reeled in with
5 to go after Wyman passed the group and inadvertently giving them a little tow
back up. With lapped riders asked to retire with 3 to go, this left 2 laps to
recover, and she managed to cross the line first out of her group, just enough
to scrape into 19th. V spent most of the race battling the wind but
kept going right to the end, and then a bit, as nobody told her to stop!
No comments:
Post a Comment