Berkshire's Kate Allan added yet another National Championship time trial title to her palmarès at the weekend, when she won the 25-mile 'blue riband' event.
It was her third national crown this year after the '50' and the '100', but it was a closer battle than she might have liked, with her 55:14 beating Team Bottrill team-mate Emily Martin by just three seconds. The team completed the podium, with Alex Clay's 56:34 placing her third.
The men's race was won by another serial victor, John Archibald (HUUB-Wattshop), whose 47-23 beat Josh Charlton (Hetton Hawks) and Michael Gill (Richardsons-Trek) into second and third place respectively.
"It's the closest it's been in a very long time," Allan told Cycling Weekly of her victory when we caught up with her on Monday morning. She was doing her own time checks on a couple of riders as they came back down the course, she explained, "And then I saw Emily, and I was like, 'Oh, this is quite close'. I was aware that it was a battle."
She had been forced to stop and unclip, she explained, by a car turning into an Aldi supermarket on the J2/21 course, between Chelford and Congleton in Cheshire. The vehicle had, ironically, paused to allow a cyclist coming the other way to continue safely through.
Allan wasn't fazed by the incident, saying, "I had one of my best results in 2015 where I got caught behind a combine harvester in the National 25. And I kind of used it to my advantage in the sense that I kind of chilled a bit, I got my breath back, I reset, and then I pushed harder. My metrics after that incident were brilliant, because I had so much more oomph.
"So I was by no means panicked," she said of Saturday's race, "I was aware that I had time to catch up."
It could be that the Aldi shopper unknowingly lent Allan the impetus needed to push hard enough to gain that slender winning advantage. But with a ride in the National 10-mile Championship less than a month away (September 1), Allan is not resting on her laurels.
She had been messaging with coach Matt Bottrill on the long drive home from her '25' victory – which was punctuated by a celebratory pizza and beer at Pizza Express – about how to prepare for the challenge.
Allan had been due to take a season off this year to concentrate on moving house. But she kept riding her bike and after the house move fell through she reckoned she might as well use the considerable base mileage she had amassed to good use.
"I always ride my bike, you know, I don't stop riding my bike," she said. "[But] I wasn't doing the top-end intensity, so I think that's what's lacking with me at the moment. I haven't raced as much as I would do normally, and I'm not probably training as intense as I would do normally - I've got to start now."
When we caught up with her she had just finished an over-unders session custom designed to hone that top-end in preparation for the 10. She will be ready for the challenge of this shortest and sharpest of championship races, she says, but certainly isn't counting any chickens.
"Having now seen how close it can get, I'm confident I can get into good form, and form that I'm proud of. I guess what happens on the day, it all depends," she said.
Whatever the result, it is clear that Allan feels at home in her current team and with coach Bottrill, who is a former national 25-mile champion himself.
"As far as a team of female racers is concerned, they are absolutely epic," Allan says. "It's just so relaxed and it's so friendly. It really makes a difference in a sport that's based on individual effort a lot of the time.
"I think, yeah, we'll be, we probably got a little bit used to sharing the podium now. It's like, which position can we get ourselves in now?
Of Bottrill himself, she says: "Nine years this August, I've worked with Matt – he knows me better than I know me."
The dominance of both men's and women's teams, she says, is down to him. "All of it really is Matt bringing it together – the support that he offers, the community that's been brought… he's done it, you know, he's brought it all together."
