17th of July 2021
Yes! New PB and smashed my season target with a 24:56 for 10 miles. I have the fastest Under 19 Girls time and 12th fastest women (all-time) on Strava, as well as 35th out of 60 men and women in todays race. I am very happy with the result.
From mid-week I have been preparing for an attempt on my PB and season target of a Sub 26-minute 10 mile time trial. My PB was 26:11, so I only needed to be 12 seconds faster and I had achieved this year’s goal.I rode the Plomesgate 10 on Thursday and looked at areas I could improve for today. My power figures were okay on Thursday, and I felt it was possible to get a new PB on this race.
We drove to Kent. When we got there, we found the course was reasonably fast, but it was not flat. The weather was okay, but it was a bit windy. I tried to hold 23.1mph as an average speed. With the head wind out, I knew I would be a bit below 23mph average.
The day started with me waking up at 6am feeling unwell, not the best start to the day. I did my normal routine before the race, but I still felt unwell. We got to the HQ on time, and it was a good temperature, not too cold and not too hot. We drove away from everyone else and found a quiet spot to warm up. I did one warm up lap of about 2 miles before dad stopped me. My rear light had stopped working. My rear light is held on by rubber things and electrical tape. Dad says that is good. He cut off the light and put the spare on. The spare was not working properly, so with 5 minutes to go dad put on another spare rear light, that did work. I went to pull away and my chain dropped again. It wasn’t going to well. We put my Chain on and I rode towards the start thinking I had a few minutes in hand. Then when I started riding up to the start and after about 30 seconds, I was sick at the side of the road. What else could possibly go wrong. I got to the start just in time. I did the usual multiple attempts at clipping in before taking the fist turn after 100 metres. I tried to push, but I was not feeling great. I tried to focus on my speed, which I did. Just before the halfway turn, another bit of bad luck. The traffic lights turned red, and I had to stop/slow right down until they went green. There was a Marshall making sure people did not jump the lights, so although I would not do that, I had to be incredibly careful it wasn’t deemed I went a bit too early. This did not affect my average time too much and as I turned to come back at the roundabout, I could feel the cross-tail wind behind me and my average at the turn was okay at 22.5, which meant I stood a chance at coming back fast. I tried to get my position as aero as I could and keep the power up. I was going down hills at 36mph and I went up a hill at 32mph, which made me feel I was in with a chance of getting the season target and a new PB. I took the last turn into a narrow country lane which looked like an average above 24mph, which was well above 23.1.Now I am home, and I can see my time. It is 24:56, which is far better than I could have dreamed of if everything had gone well, but seeing as I had a bad pre-race experience, I am super happy with the result. (And I don’t feel sick anymore). I did an average of 24.2mph overall.
