By Amelia Harper
This was the first time I had raced at the League Valley Olympic Velopark so I was excited to race at a new circuit. The race that I did was called a “criterium” or a “crit” for short, which involves several laps around a circuit track for around 35 to 55 minutes. There is lots of close bunch riding and particularly quite a lot of shouting! The weather was horribly windy, there were several corners where we all had to take it quite carefully so as not to be blown off our bikes and cause a crash. The wind was particularly prominent along the home-stretch to the finish, where it was real head-down and gritted teeth type of riding. The race itself was very exciting, there were a few attacks from several of the women, meaning there was a surge of speed which other riders have to react to. Luckily, I reacted to all of them and stayed with the front bunch where I tried to stay out of the wind behind the other women. Is quite a flat course with only a couple of hills, but the attacks were usually on the hills. My previous two races had been on a hilly course so this wasn't too unfamiliar for me. There was a breakaway bunch of seven of us, and I was fifth going into the sprint finish. Unfortunately I was pipped at the line by two people and came in seventh, but I was still really happy with the result (out of 19).
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