Next up was the Asda Tour de Yorkshire Women’s Race this year!
For me the race starts a few days before. I travelled to York on Wednesday and picked up my team mates Anna Christian and Lucy Garner on the way. This is a time where having our Honda cars come in very handy!!
Thursday was a busy day! I caught up with my teammates, and we set off to do a recce of the course. It wasn’t a normal recce, as we had BBC Breakfast join us for most of the day! We did the first 75km of the route in the car and stopped at a local school to meet the children, who were already excited for the race that weekend. It’s always good to stop and chat to fans and inspire more people to cycle.
Amy Roberts congratulates stage winner, Chloe Hosking – Tour of Chongming Island 2016 – Stage 2. A 113km road race on Chongming Island, China on May 7th 2016.
We rode the last part of the course together, typically it rained and was pretty cold. It’s always good to have a chance to see the course before the race. It gives us an opportunity to know what to expect and find out where the hills are.
Friday, our Team DS, Egon, planned an hours’ spin on the bikes, just 2 15km loops near the hotel. We had more media in the afternoon, so it turned into a busy day! But it’s great to have the coverage and support for women’s racing, it helps to publicise the sport and the athletes. After dinner, we had a quick race meeting to start to get our heads ready for the race tomorrow.
5.00am the alarm went off on race day, ready for breakfast at 5.15am – three hours before racing begins. We had a 45 minute transfer to the race start as well, so didn’t want to rush around and get stressed. It’s important to stay relaxed before the race, and not get too worked up. We had our final team meeting in the camper before the race, and discussed the race plan before heading to sign on.
I couldn’t believe how many people were at the start. It was still pretty early in the morning, and cold! Once on the start line, the excitement started to build and the team felt really good.
During the race, it was my job to cover attacks, get into the break and be up there ready to work for my teammates. When Lizzie Armitstead made her move, it shook the race up and we had to chase hard to bring it back. It was a tough course, but we knew if the race was together it would come down to a sprint. Luckily for us we had Lucy Garner ready to go for the sprint, and after a hard chase it was nice to have her finish it off in a great second place for the team. After the race, we all went back to the camper for our post-race briefing. We were all in a good place, with Lucy getting second. It was a happy place to be. I stayed with Lucy in Leicester afterwards, along with Mayuko, so we got to watch the men’s race in the afternoon and then head back home ready to prep for our next race which was the Tour of Chongming Island.
We only had a couple days before it was time to head down to Heathrow for our flight to Shanghai. We had a long travel day ahead of us so we made sure we were well rested. This was my second time racing here but this year being a little different with it being part of the world tour.
Amy Roberts (Wiggle High5) – Tour of Chongming Island 2016 – Stage 1. A 139.8km road race on Chongming Island, China on May 6th 2016.
Overall the 3 days of racing for us went very well with Chloe taking the overall win and bringing the yellow jersey home. We all worked well as a team throughout the racing and was a real nice atmosphere to be in. The first day we had crazy hot temperatures so that added difficulty to the race, the next few days were cooler and finished off with a very grim and wet last stage. Another thing you have to be prepared for when racing in China is the food, obviously a very important thing for us cyclists so i think we were quite happy to be heading home and looking forward to some ‘normal’ food.
For me now its time for a little break and then to get back into training ready for the next few races and to start preparing for the national champs in June.
