The Olympic Games
Where to start!
I’ve avoided putting a pen to paper for a few weeks now as I’ve not known what to say or how to describe my Olympic experience. First and foremost, I never went to the Olympics as the reserve for the women’s team pursuit. That was never the aim. I kept fighting for a spot right until the Olympic final. There is an option to change a rider up until an hour to go before the race, I never gave up hope until I was finally told I would not be riding.
As the girls warmed up for their Olympic final; I opted to do a 12 minute test on the turbo (a standard test piece we often do, so I had a lot of data that I could compare it to). I destroyed my personal best and soon prepared myself to cheer my teammates on. Although I didn’t get to race, I was pleased I got to test my own form and felt like I hadn’t tapered for nothing.
As a team; we’ve been through a lot; good and bad races; incredibly hard training camps and I’ve seen what we are capable of. Personally, I was part of a world record team pursuit ride in Newport on our training camp pre Rio. To be part of this team was an incredible experience and one I will never forget. To stand on the sidelines and watch the girls win Olympic gold presented a mixture of emotions. Heartbroken that I wasn’t riding; yet extremely proud of the girls and their incredible three rides to win the gold in an outstanding world record time of 4:10.23. I’ve witnessed the hard work that has been displayed over the years and they thoroughly deserved the win.
But life must go on; and I have new goals on the horizon. I’m back into full training now as I’ve signed for Cervelo Bigla and will be hoping to race the World Team Time Trial championships in Qatar in October. I’m really looking forward to this new challenge and am enjoying getting stuck into some hard training!
