Senior Track Nationals

Photo credit – @carldowningphotography

On Thursday we travelled up to Newport for the 4km individual pursuit qualification, my first race of this year’s championship. 

Being my local velodrome, it felt familiar and relaxed, however one thing was clear, the track was very cold. I prepared my bike with the correct gear and put both front and rear discs on the bike and then began my warmup. For the individual pursuit I like my warmups to be slightly longer than a standard warm up but still containing the same ramp-up in intensity and 3 rev outs to really get the legs going.

Into the gate I went, relaxed, and focused, the beeps counted down and I was away. A 4:46, disappointment, a long way off the 4:26 needed to qualify. Although only my 2^nd competitive 4km pursuit I had hoped to go faster than I did in training a few weeks prior. I cooled down and watched the rest of the pursuits, only 5 riders qualified into the next day’s racing. 

Back home I quickly moved on and refocused on my preparation for the Points race for Saturday. 

On Friday I went for an easy (but cold) activation spin with Katie-Anne who was also competing in the Women’s Points, Scratch and Keiren over the weekend.

Saturday morning arrived and back to a much warmer velodrome, for the Points race qualification. I knew I needed to score to be guaranteed a ride in the final later that night. The racing started and attacks quickly followed, I rolled through for my turns in the bunch but didn’t manage to make it into any of the decisive moves. Five laps to go and my final opportunity to try and qualify with the final sprint fast approaching, I tried to move up towards the front and as the bell lap rang, I was in an ok position. Left into the back straight fast accelerating, left into the home straight but stuck going wide, 8^th in the Final sprint leaving me short on points and missing qualification into the final that night. Whilst a significant improvement from last year’s ride, I came off the track somewhat disappointed before seeing that even 10^th place had scored 13 points, so qualification was always going to be tough.

Cool down rest and recover, there was another race to prepare for, Scratch qualification on Sunday. The race started and it was fast from the gun with attacks rolling and everyone pulling their turns to keep the pace high. As the laps counted down, I knew I needed to position myself towards the front as it was shaping up to be a fast final sprint for qualification, just as I was happy with my positioning, an attack! Everyone quickly responded but it had cost me a few positions coming into the final sprint, I tried to make up some positions in the final but didn’t have the legs to get round and qualify. My first Senior National Scratch was over. 

Overall, it was a good weekend with improvements from the previous year’s rides whilst also doing more races, however there were no major results or qualifying rides to shout about or put on paper.