Abbey Thompson Blog Page

6th of June 2021

Today I rode the RTTC National Circuit Championships in Naseby. The race was just under 33 miles long. The day before; my dad, brother, sister and I stayed in a hotel. We drove the course in the evening. We realised the course wasn’t flat, so my bike was set-up wrong, as dad put gears on it for a flat course. We had a smaller front ring with us, but it meant I still had wrong gears. I could just about get up the hills, but it wasn’t fast.

On the day it was warm but rained a tiny bit halfway through the race. On the first lap, just before a long hill, my chain fell off and I had stop and put it back on. This was because of the set-up changes. On the second lap, as I was going down a super-fast hill, my chain fell off again. I stopped at the bottom of the hill because I wouldn’t make it up the steep hill with no chain on, but I was in the hardest gear down the hill, so I had to put the chain on and ride up the hill (quite slowly because I started from the bottom of the hill and had to clip in and get my speed up a bit.) I lost about 3 minutes in total, not all of it because I had to stop, but also because I couldn’t use my speed to climb the next hill.

I was beaten fairly by my main competitor in this race. She was two years older, and very nice. I have one more of this type of race and hopefully we will understand the course better next time. I had a great time, and it was a good experience.

1st of June 2021

I rode the Orwell Velo 10TT on the A137 starting at Wherstead and working down to the Orwell Bridge. It isn’t the fastest course, but it is interesting. I was a bit slow into a few of the tighter corners and I think I could have gone faster down the big hill to the finish. When I finished I rode the course again, which was about the same distance that I would have ridden if I rode home.

31st of May 2021

Today I woke up at 5:30 am to go to the Stowmarket & District CC 10 mile Time Trial.

When we got there it was a bit cold (10 degrees), but when I started racing at 07:38 it got a bit warmer at 12 degrees.

The start had moved from where dad remembered it, as there was a new road layout, but I warmed up with my friend Laura Davies as I was one number after her and we found the start. At the start we were allowed to be held up, which wasn’t possible during the previous lock down, so I got a faster start than before.

The course was quite nice and quite fast, but it had some big pot holes I couldn’t see easily. I went into quite a few of them, which wasn’t great, but I didn’t lose too much time.

My previous PB was 26minutes and 48 Seconds, today I have for 10 miles a new PB of 26 minutes and 27 Seconds, My season target time is 25:59, so I’m getting closer.

The ladies at time trials are very nice and supportive, thanks Sue and Laura.

29th of May 2021

Today I went to Lotus Near Norwich for the first road race under normal conditions. The girl I was going to race against didn’t turn up. I had to race against just boys who have a bigger sprint than girls. I decided to sprint from the start. I put a 1minute 53 second first lap, which was about 25.3mph avg. This meant I had a lead of about 10 seconds to the field. After a couple of laps on my own two boys worked together and caught up to me. One dropped off the back so I asked the other boy if we could work together, which we did. It didn’t help my average speed, but there was just two of us. On the corner before the last one, I did a sprint at 28.7 mph, but it was too far out at about 800 mtrs. The boy kept up and passed me as we went into the last corner. We were together in the last corner and sprinted together towards the line, but he was stronger and took the over all win. I’m not sure where everyone else finished, but they were about half a lap or more back and I lapped some of my age group twice. It was nice to finally to do a proper road race. I really enjoyed it and it was hot, which was nice.

Today I went to another 10-mile time trial. The one I was meant to do, in Holbrook was cancelled so I I did one in diss instead. It was a nice course and it was actually quite fast. I got to the start with ten seconds to go🤦‍♀‍😅 and had a very slow start. I got a new PB for 10 miles and even though I think I could have gone faster in some places, overall I don’t think I did too bad.

Post Written by LT:Not sure how to describe the conditions other than it was 10 degrees, very wet, flooding, road works signage on a junction etc, but other than that, what a lovely friendly local 10TT.

I asked Abbey what she thought about the race and she thought for a second before saying “Yes, ummm wet and not fast”, which I thought summed it up.

Hopefully the sun will come out next week and the smiles will be even broader. A few photos below, but it wasn’t easy to take the photos in a rain storm, so not the greatest quality pics. Great support from Riana (mum), Eva and Callum…

Some Professional Photos

Today, I woke up at 5am to go to the Lee valley velodrome for the last track cluster session. Some of my club mates were also there.
The session was 2 hours long and I really enjoyed it. I tried hard at most times but I didn’t over do it because I have a TT at 2pm near Cambridge. Me and my dad had a milkshake and a wrap before leaving to go to the Eastern County Cycling Association 25 mile championship. The weather was not very nice and it rained heavily throughout the race and it was pretty cold. My visor also steamed up pretty bad. Even though I hadn’t completely recovered from track in the morning, I still did a pb of 1hr 7 minutes and 29 seconds, about 37 kph (which is ten minutes faster than my previous pb). I wasn’t planning on doing any more 25 mile time trials this year, but because of the bad conditions, I will probably have to do one more. I think I can go a couple of mins quicker.