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Hey,

I’m just sat in the airport having finished my 2nd ever stage race the tour d’laude its been ten days of hard racing round the area of Carcassonne in the south of France, its probably the biggest stage race for women all year, so its not surprising when all the top women turn out for it.

After my return to the bike after my break, I built up slowly doing running, gym and some riding on the bike in April, at the end of April I had a 10 day training camp with Fidea and AVB (who I will be riding with from the 1st of September) it was a really good training camp in Majorca. I did some good long rides with the guys and by the end of the ten days I felt a lot better on the bike, it was nice to get to know all of my new team mates and learn a little more Flemish too which is always a bonus!.

My plan after the training camp was to start racing, I did 2 big Dutch races (middag Humsterland and omloop de kempen) which my team from moving ladies won. It was a good kick start to the road season and I actually felt quite strong.

It was just after this I was called up to ride tour de laude with GB, I couldn’t turn it down I have always wanted to do this race and I knew if I could get through it would give me a great base towards the cross season and also some good form for the road.

I got a flight on the Wednesday from Charleroi to Carcassonne airport where I would be meeting up with the other GB girls. It was a bad start to the trip with me having my purse stolen at the train station on the way to the airport, but I soon forgot about that once I started racing.

The tour was hard, but very enjoyable, I learned a lot about how far I could push myself, and how much my body could cope with. For me its just what I needed and it has given me some confidence too, I felt very strong in a lot of the stages and was surprised that I was able to get up there on some of the days. I think the worst I felt was day 7 where we were right in the mountains, every day was flat out from the start but this day was especially hard with a 14 km climb 4km into the race. It was split to pieces and I had to really dig in to get into a good bunch in front of me. The other girls did really good too, for them its there first year as seniors and so it was more about getting through it which they all did (apart from Anna who ended up spending the whole of Saturday afternoon in hospital with gravel rash from a big crash!) not such a good start to her road racing career but she stayed out with us for the rest of the week and by the end she was back riding her bike! Im happy to have finished and look forward to a bit of easy riding and resting before my next race therme kassienomloop……

Race report on bc -

http://www.britishcycling.org.uk/web/site/BC/gbr/EventReports2009/20090526_TourdeAude.asp