The Road Season Begins....kind of. (11th, June 2010)
I promised myself when I had my website redone at the end of last year I would try and keep on top of keeping it up to date, hasn’t quite happened just yet but I will keep trying J
Trainings been going well, I’ve taken things steady and I’m building up slowly into the road season. I went on a training camp at the start of May to Majorca with AVB and Fidea for 10 days training, the weather was perfect up until the last day when there were big thunderstorms, we couldn’t complain too much as the 9 days before that were just perfect for riding the bike. Last year I really worked hard in the training camp but this year I held myself back and just enjoyed doing some steady base riding, I came out the camp feeling better than the start and that’s what I needed to happen.
I returned to
I hadn’t been on the mountain bike properly for over 5 years and so I was really looking forward to doing some of my favourite routes back home in Derbyshire. I had a great time, I was rusty at first and I had forgot how hard MTB was, my whole body felt completely battered but as the week went on I got used to it and it helped that my brother was there to go out with, after a few days of him on my case constantly shouting “Nikki get off your brakes” I had no choice but to do so and it wasn’t long before my confidence was back. I love being back home, its good for the moral and in a way like a mini training camp as I get everything done for me ;-)!
Back to reality and back to
Sometimes things don’t go quite to plan, especially when you’re a cyclist. The last major road race I did was the World Championships, when I went there my form was really good, but I had bad luck with the crash and my broken collar bone, that was almost 7 months ago now, so enough time for my luck to change….so I thought.
As it was my first proper race since the cross season I didn’t know how I would be going and how I would do riding in the bunch I have only been doing steady base training and These girls had been racing since end of Feb on the road so I really was throwing myself in the deep end. My aim for this race was to just try and stay near the front end of the race and try and help Nicole at the finish.
The hotel we stayed at was really nice and luckily it was only a short ride away from the race start.
The course was 115km with 3 short (crit style) finishing laps. It was a rolling course with a few climbs, some wide open fast rode and some long open sections with potential for big cross winds, more like the style of racing I like.
My legs felt good, after 30km I punctured but this was no big deal, after a quick wheel change I was straight back on the bunch I felt comfortable and pretty strong, there was a few had parts during the race where it was lined out, it split a few times but in the end there was a group of about 50 of us with 3 away coming into the finishing circuits. I moved my way up to the front and with a km n half to go I got on the front to keep the pace high for Nicole so that know body could attack I pulled off with just under a km to, I went round a corner, a girl came out wide, hit my front wheel and the only place I could go was straight into a central concrete reservation, over the bars and landed really heavy on the floor, I was a bit all over the place with girls riding into me on my left and right. I got helped up, got on my bike and strolled across the finish line, I couldn’t hold on to my bars properly and I thought I had broken my collarbone again. Luc helped clean my legs and arm up and I decided to ride back to the hotel with the rest of the girls. It was only when I got in the shower and realised I couldn’t actually lift my arm that I started to worry, we travelled 200km to the next hotel for
I flew back to
Looks like its going to be a few days with my feet up, some DVDs and plenty of ice.
Hopefully I will be ok to ride the National Championships Road race in 2 weeks time.
Nikki x