Addiscombe 25m TT, April 2010

Girls on Tour: Kim Ashton and Jo Le Cocq travel to the UK

Travelling from Jersey to the UK for a race, taking the quickest route possible involves flights, hire cars, hotels, bike boxes, bike building and dismantling. But it’s worth it to get on a start line with so many women cyclists. The Addiscome 25 Mile TT was superbly organised, thank goodness there were so many marshals who did a fantastic job all pointing me in the right direction, as on paper it was quite a confusing course full of turns and roundabouts. The hot tea and cake after a cold and wet race was just what Kim and I needed before packing up and travelling on to watch Chris Spence and Nik Le Cocq take part in their second tough race of the weekend.

The TT started at 6.30 am. Kim turned up on the start line, like a lot of other girls, with just her road bike, a pair of deep rim carbon wheels and clip on TT bars and still managed to pull off a really strong performance of 1:05:58, I was very impressed! I turned up on the start line fully TT’d up, no excuses other than seriously not having a clue where I was going even though I had driven the course the night before with Kim reading the map and telling me where to go however, I still managed a 1.08.29 and embarrassingly an extra lap of a round about and U-turn in a housing estate!

Out of more than 20 women Kim came 7th and I came 9th so we were both pretty pleased with our performances. The wining lady, who was over 40 years old also beat the majority of men and completed the course in 59 minutes. The lady who came 2nd did 1.01.59 and then 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th all did low 1 hour 5 minutes so Kim had a very competitive time amongst the stronger ladies.

The race was one of the London Women’s Racing League, it’s a fantastic idea to have a women’s racing league as it guarantees a very good field of women attending which makes travelling the distance worth it. This year is the first time I have ever entered women’s races and I find it really different to racing with men, you can do a bit more in road races than just hang on for dear life!

Kim and I had a fantastic weekend in all, everyone was so friendly and helpful we can’t wait for the next race.

Thanks to Jo for the report.