The past month has been filled with more than I could hope to learn in a year on a professional team, making me all that more excited about the next 5 months!
From meeting famous faces, getting my bearings set from riding hours on end (personal best of 7 hours one day!), to driving cross country to race in the middle of nowhere in Winter conditions, and am loving every minute of it!

Upon arrival the team was located in an amazing hill side abode for a few days for team camp. This included meeting sponsors, rides with the Pro Men’s Peleton (as the Men’s Tour of California was on), photo shoots, an early Christmas when all the team gear was allocated and our first race of the season, the Santa Rosa Women’s Tour of California.
While I usually consider myself a stress-less kind of racer, this start line certainly had my stomach upside down, and thankfully I wasn’t wearing my heart rate monitor or else I probably would have been in for a new race start record high!
But of course after the first 10 metres, when one finally has their foot clipped into the pedals, the nerves are forgotten and an hour later after much huffing and puffing (in which I could see my own breath- remember its still winter here!) the team had a brilliant season start with team Captain Brooke Miller taking the win.

I have jumped into the swing of this American life, remember “right is right!” when on ones bike, the coffee line is extremely long between the hours of 7 and 8am , it’s “to-go” Not “takeaway”, and ‘coffee shops’ have no idea what a ‘flat white’ is. Good idea to order salad dressing on the side unless you want dressing with salad not the other way around, bagels must and only go with cream cheese and jelly- not jam, and when bored, never fear, there is a guaranteed selection of reality TV shows on TV!

So this year for me is all about being part of a team, I am the youngest and from the furthest away, and I am happy to be here doing ‘domestique’ duties of leading other team mates out, as in turn in the next race they will help me (or whoever has legs of fire on race day!)

Since my arrival I have raced every weekend and am developing valuable skills for a long season ahead. As of writing I am currently in the lead of a series called the Highway 99 series, which includes 3 weekends of racing along highway 99 in California. This weekend coming sees a Criterium and a 40km Individual Time Trial, or in other words, way too long in the ‘cave of pain’ without a flashlight!
Then it will be two more weeks of training at my home base. I’ll be sipping coffee and bagel eating before the first big tour…Redlands Bicycle Classic in northern Los Angeles. My parents are also journeying over for. Then I am going to drive them the long and scenic way home up the coast, remembering right is right!!

Find out how you best approach races, clam, nervous, excited and try to recreate the same situation in every pre-race, this hopefully allows you to take it all in and enjoy the race instead of being scared of it!!