Jenny's World Champs Race

“Where there is challenge, there is growth”

Jenny Powell:

“It was last year when I did the Worlds Gran Fondo in Glasgow, and I came 9th in my age group. I said after that race, considering I hadn’t trained the best for it, and I did actually quite well, I thought “hang on, there is something here”

I set myself the goal, I want to win one of these, I want to win some rainbow strips in my career as a cyclist…

I said next year I am going to do a few more Gran Fondos, I am going to qualify, and I am going to get to the worlds race again next year in Denmark.

I set myself that goal, and I worked back from there. I raced the Andy Shleck Gran Fondo and the Isle of Man, and won both which qualified me. In between that, I just threw myself back into racing…I just felt like it was something that I actually missed. To get race fit, you actually have to race, so I knew I had to get some racing in me…I just went privateer and chose the races that I wanted to do the most, made some trips out of them.

The race was 100miles, it all stayed together which was unfortunate, I tried to break it up a few times but there was nothing to spread things out. But essentially it all come down to a bunch sprint.

When we came into the last 10kms, and things started to get a bit spicy…I started to drift back a bit. I’ve always told myself I am not really a sprinter and I lose my confidence. At about 5kms, I was in the middle of the peloton and I did not like where I was…I told myself

“alright Jen, you’ve got to put your big girl pants on now and get to the front of the race…now when it matters, why are you back here?”

I had a proper chat with myself.

And that was that, I managed to sprint…I thought it was mine, in the last little stretch, she came around me and I crossed the line 2nd.