Tywyn Crit & Abergavenny Road Race

After a great result for Maxgear the day before with Mel coming 5^th and me 6th in Tywyn criterium and each of us winning a prime, I was hoping to ride this race as well as Naseby, although there were quite a few inexperienced cyclists with some being dropped in the neutralised zone and the bunch was extremely sketchy in places. On the first lap I decided it needed to be broken up a little more so I attacked and got over a minute off the front of the main bunch (they were unable to see me on the duel carriage way!). I decided to slow as nobody had come with me and I knew I wouldn’t last the 40miles on my own. I should have stayed away, as when the bunch caught me they were going not much faster, as there had been some attacks off the front in an effort to catch me. I settled back into the bunch spending a bit of time on the front to catch Sarah Byrne (who solo’d a 2 minute lead) and trying to liven up the pace of the race, although it didn’t really ignite like I’d hoped.
On the sprint up to the finish on the lower slopes on the final climb we were in a bunch of 30 on Hannah Walker’s wheel coming up the outside with just 800 metres to go when I heard a scream and crashing from the other side of the bunch. I pulled over to the other side of the road to safety. The crash rippled through the bunch in a domino effect and Ruby Millers head came down just in front of me. I swerved off into the bush to avoid the crash and wrapped myself around a tree in the process. Once I’d gotten out of the tree with only minor scrapes and bruises, I found my chain had come off so I pushed my chain back on and rode up to the top of the hill. I came 17th because a few dropped cyclists had passed the crash and came ahead in the standings. It was a very bad end to the race with my team mate Nicola (also from Maxgear) hitting the deck pretty hard and unfortunately broking her collar bone. There were many other bad injuries and the scene has been described as like one from M.A.S.H with only 7 of the bunch managing to avoid it.