So proud of this team of 3 generations of track cycling women.
I had to have a wee think and dig deep when these stars asked me a couple of months ago to be part of this.
They are young and fast and I was struggling after a difficult summer and wasn't in much shape to keep up.
The journey and process to these national team sprint championships has been challenging, very interesting and enlightening and so much FUN!
I'm so grateful 🥲🙏🏻.
We came away with a silver and reached our goals in the process.
I have been coaching both these girls, but in this team they let me be a rider first, with my doubts, aches, insecurities, dreams.
At the start of the process I couldn't keep up and I was very worried about being of no value to the team, so I knew I had to dig deep and made a 9 week plan focusing on this day.
I wanted to be of value to the team as a rider and I wanted the man 3 spot as I find it the most interesting and it suits my physiology best.
I had to earn that spot: there is no point in being man 3 if you get dropped in the first lap as I did in our first training session 😭.
So proud I fixed it and all the ah moments to get there.
There was no discussion, the old dragon was going to be 3 ☺️.
We raced once at the end of October and did 54,9. Yiran 1, Phaedra 2 and myself on 3. It was a good test, both physically and mentally. We came round as a team, I didn't get dropped.
We wanted to go round the track 3 times as fast as we could with the 3 of us and set breaking 54,0 at nationals as a specific goal, doing that would be great.
Personally I wanted to hit 60 kph in a TS, I have been close many times. Also I wanted to peak, produce my best power numbers in this 9 week process on the day.
The girls decided to change positions and they were so smart and self-sufficient doing that. I was busy being a rider and found it difficult to have a good coaching perspective on it.
In qualifying, see video, we did an amazing 53,2 and I hit 61,2 kph (due to Yiran) and produced my best numbers!
Big thanks to everyone involved, all the help and advice.
Another fantastic experience!