August Blog

August has been quite chaotic as I had a lot going on, including two big races and a training camp/holiday.

I started off the month at the European Champs in Turkey. The format was split into 3 days , in which the first two were of individual aspects and the third the relay. Day one was heats in which the top 8 in each heat would qualify for the finals, with 6 fastest losers qualifying also. My heat started off very well as I managed to work my way up to the front pack of the race, however I stacked it around the corner and lost too much time to get back onto the pack. Luckily I wasn't really hurt, however didn't manage to qualify for the A final and instead for the B. Although this was very disappointing I still went all out in the B final and managed to get the win. Sadly, The relay didn’t go to plan as the first athlete in my team also crashed which ended our hopes of a podium, therefore we ended up finishing 4th. Reflecting back on the race, although it didn't all go to plan I made the most of the situation and also learned new lessons such as how to deal with heat in races.

The following 3 weeks of my summer consisted of holiday's/ training camps, in which I spent 2 weeks in the French Alps with some of my mates, and one week in Spain. The week in Spain was slightly more relaxing as it was a taper week into the next race on the calendar, the Super Series Eton Dorney eliminator.

The Eton Dorney Eliminator was made up of 4 races, with each race relegating you to a lower cat race if you didn't finish within a certain number of people. It was going to be very tough to stay in the A final as we were racing with the seniors, and there were only 13 slots for the A in the last race. I felt really good on the day and therefore managed to stay in the A final until the last race, however post-race I received a 10-second penalty which ended up setting me back into the B final. Sadly I also ended up getting calf cramps in the last race in the run, but still managed to finish 3rd Junior which I was pretty pleased with.

I'm really looking forward to the last two races of the season which are in the next few weeks, and really happy with my current form at the moment.