British National Championships - Innerleithen, Scotland

Published on 20th July, 2009

This week’s challenge: to defend my Elite National title.

I made the trip up to Scotland on Saturday and rode a lap in the afternoon between the persistent rain showers...

The Innerleithen course definitely stands out from what we’ve been riding recently. It’s a great mountain bike course, tough climbing and technical downhill. Probably best defined as ‘old school’ big climb, long descent and over 25mins per lap and I’d ridden here once before in 2000 as a Junior.
On Sunday the weather was fine, just a few light showers.

The elites were up for 5 laps which would be spot on for a 2 hour+ winning time.

From the gun Oli and myself got to the front and broke away from the others, Oli was climbing aggressively and got the first decent with a small gap, I managed to close the gap on the downhill. For the next few laps we shared the tempo but going into the penultimate lap I felt confident enough to up the pace slightly and gain a lead and increased it on the final lap.
Really pleased to have the red white and blue stripes for another year at least. It was great to see my Trek team-mate Tracey Moseley win=2 0the women’s Elite downhill and very good to see such a turnout of spectators over the weekend.

Keep rollin’



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