So after a long time out of racing due to illness it was time to get back to it. With my first race being Bene ladies tour, pretty much right on the boarder of Holland and Belgium. It started off with a very early morning and a taxi ride to Bristol to catch our 7am flight to Amsterdam. It was nice to have Anna travelling with me too. We got to Amsterdam where Lucy and Lars were waiting to take us home. Again I was lucky enough to be having them as hosts for the next week.
Once we arrived we did a nice spin to get the travel out the legs before heading to the race the next day. Bene ladies tour was a three day stage race with 3 road stages and a time trial. To be back racing was a big shock to the system. Having not done much intensity at all it was a tough one being back in the peloton with some hard racing. I did what i could for the team with some better and worse days. Normally the TT would be my thing but i don’t think my body was quite ready for that and so didn’t quite get a result i was hoping for. Luckily for us we had on form Jolien racing and as she did last year, pretty much dominated the whole thing. Was good to get the weekend of racing in the legs, and very nice for me to have my grandparents out there watching too.
After that weekend Anna and myself went back to Lucy’s where we would stay until La Course which was on the weekend after. We had a good week of training/relaxing in some very nice weather which made it a very enjoyable week.
On the Saturday we got the train to Paris. So a bit more travelling in the legs but a pretty easy way of getting there. We arrived at the hotel (which was a very nice 5star hotel) just outside of Paris. Straight away we thought we’d get on the turbo and get a spin done as we didn’t have long until dinner.
Sunday was race day. La course is a massive race for women’s cycling and we were all excited/ nervous to see what we could do. Compared to last year we had way better weather with it being hot and the sun shining, so hopefully it wasn’t going to be like riding on an ice rink!!
It was a hard race, the pace was high basically the whole time. It’s also not quite what it looks like on tv with pretty much the whole thing being cobbled and it also being quite a long drag up the Champs-Elysées. It was of course an amazing race to be a part of, early on we did miss a break which wasn’t quite what we wanted but it came back and was looking like it was going to be a bunch sprint. Unfortunately for me my chain came off in the last three laps and with having to stop to get it back on my race was over as had nothing left in me to get back in the race. To eventually find out that Chloe (Hosking) had won was an amazing feeling. Watching the finish back after she also made it look easy!! This was a big win for the team and so everyone was on a high afterwards. After the race we got to stay and watch the men come in which was pretty cool and then our evening finished off with a meal in our hotel with sponsors and journalists!
Next on the calendar for me was the National crit championships in Birmingham. I hadn’t decided to do them until quite late but thought the extra racing would be good. So on Thursday after a short spin in the morning I headed on up there with my boyfriend. The race was tough with a drag on the circuit, i tried to get away but never really managed to get a good enough gap with there being some well represented British teams. It came to a sprint and didn’t really have anything in the legs left. Was a good race to do before Ride London on the weekend. A race with the biggest prize fund ever for women and equal to the men!! It was such a tough race, flat out all the way. It didn’t quite go so well for us Wiggle girls but thats racing and now its on to the next one, a 7 day stage race in France which starts with a 3.2km prologue on Sunday 🙂
