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Eleanor Dickinson won the
Revolution Future Starts competition last season and stepped
up to the elite category at the round four in Glasgow in
November. Despite just returning from injury the Junior
European Championships scratch race silver medallist picked up
top 10 results in three of four races. You can read Ellie's
blog from round four
here.
Dickinson picked up in 2016 where she left off in 2015 at
round five of the revolution series on January 2nd in
Manchester. Among a strong field including World and Olympic
Champions Laura Trott, Elinor Barker and Kirsten
Wild in the opening points race Dickinson picked up sixth
before going on to take third in the elimination scratch race.
Saturdays racing at Revolution was a great was to kick off
2016. After training hard over Christmas with the Olympic
Development Programme in Derby, I was really looking forward
to getting stuck into racing the Revolution Series.
For me the afternoon session was more successful than the
evening. My first event on the track was the 80-lap points
race. After following wheels throughout the first half of the
race, I decided to go with an attack ahead of sprint 3 with
Henrietta Colbourne. I managed to pick up 5 points from
winning the sprint. When we were brought back to the group we
still had 50 fast laps remaining, so it was my main focus to
stay at the head of the race. I did not manage to go on and
pick up any more points but I finished the race in sixth
place, which I was really happy with. To even get some points
on the board with such a class field was a big achievement for
me.
The best result of the day for me came in the elimination
scratch race. The first 10 laps, 10 riders were eliminated
then for the remaining riders it turned into a scratch race.
My goal for this race was to make the scratch race (to not be
eliminated). So when I made the race I was pretty happy. Then
I needed to start thinking about how I could get the best
result against such a strong field remaining. It was really
important for me to follow the right wheels, so that's what I
did. With one lap to go I got myself onto Laura Trott's wheel,
which then meant I had scratch race World Champion Kirsten Wild on my
hip. I found myself neck and neck with Wild, it was hard to
hold my position against such a strong rider so I dropped into
third and finished behind Laura Trott and Kirsten Wild and
managed to hold Emily Kay off. I was over the moon with a
third place finish!!!
After a tiring afternoon session, I then had a long wait ahead
for the evening session to begin. There is a lot of waiting
around in between races and this isn't easy when you're inside
a hot velodrome. By the start of the evening session I was
already mentally very tired. First up was the elimination,
where I ended up finishing with a top 10, but with sore legs
and taking those sore legs into the fast attacking 40 lap
scratch race it was always going to be a struggle. From then I
didn't expect much from myself I dug in and finished the race
somewhere amongst the group.
Overall I am super happy with my race results. It was a
massive improvement from the first Revolution Series it shows
my training is paying off.
After a late night Saturday, I was up at 6.30am to be on the
track at 8am with ODP in preparation for our next trip to
Alkmaar- Holland, for a track event, which will take place
this Saturday & Sunday. I'm really looking forward to seeing
how we all get on there, as a team and individually.
Our Sunday morning track session was then followed by a 2-hour
road ride in the grim weather of Manchester with some hill
efforts to finish off a tough weekend.
Happy New Year :-) |
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