Photo: Michael Langvad
With my road team, ABC Ladies, I went for some solid training in a road race last sunday. I enjoy the variation, riding on the road from time to time, when the time between the mountainbike races allow it.
My goal for the race was to get a som hard training. Since I only seldom race the danish road races, I had no idea, how my level would be, but I knew, that my changes for riding fast were good. My goal was to get away in a break, hopefully with some of my team mates. Our race consisted of 3 laps on a 22 km lap, with lot of wind and rolling hills.
Since the race distance was quite short, the speed was high right from the beginning of the race. The first 1 km long hill would be the place, that the field was really torn apart. Road races can be really dramatic when it comes to crashes and unfortunately my team mate Cecilie was the unlucky one. Right when she launched an attack near the top of the hill, her foot slipped out of the pedal and she went down. It happened very fast, I was riding somewhere behind and managed to not get involved.
The pace was still high, and all the sudden we were a group of 7, who had got away. We managed to distance ourselves from the rest by keeping on working together. When we crossed the finishline after the first lap, people started to attack, but all the attacks got caught again. In our group were 3 teammembers from team Rytger, the rest of us riding for different teams. I thought to myself, that they pretty much would control the race, if not the rest of us tried to do something. So, I decided to counterattack, and hoped, that maybe some of the other lone-riders would come with me. The plan worked well, until the point of getting company. Noone followed me, so all the sudden I was in a position riding alone with 40km to go. I was a little uncertain what to do, but was encouraged by my teamleaders in the car behind me, just to put my head down and keep on going..
Photo: Michael Langvad
Luckily my legs felt good and I could push myself. From time to time, it was quite thrilling to be in the front riding a solorace, without knowing what was going on behind me. I was told, that the others were still working together to catch me, but that they didn’t come closer. I settled into my best time-trial mode and found a selection of songs to repeat over and over in my head, while focusing on keeping the pace high. With only 10 km to go, the hardest part of the course appeared: straight road with extreme headwind. I imagined, that this part was a hillclimb in a mountainbikerace, absolutely giving all I had. That showed to be a good plan, and all the sudden I was so close to the finish line, that I knew, that victory was home safe. So cool!
Photo: Michael Langvad
The upcoming weekend I’ll be back on the nobby tires, racing the Danish Sram Liga in Varde.
