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.
