It was all going great and then we got to the sharp right-hand turn in to the Templehoff airfield, the road narrowed at this point as well. The roads in town were wide, the bunch was flowing well and riders were signalling turns as indicated by good race marshals. Once we got off the autobahn and in to the edge of Berlin there had been surges and some attacks but nothing major, a couple of riders sat 10-20 seconds off the front on the autobahn but soon got reeled back or chose to drop back in to the bunch. I had to bite my tongue not to dive off the front, I really wanted to but decided to keep my energy for later, I’m glad I did. I even sat on the front for a little while. I made an effort to stay near the edge of the bunch to the right as there was the most space and I could move up when I wanted to. I got pushed off the right side of the bunch a few times in to the wind down the autobahn but didn’t feel out of my depth, I just dropped back across in to the wheels as soon as I could. After seeing some of the videos of the crashes in the men’s race on the autobahn it turns out we got off lightly, some of the guys went down like skittles. There was no tight formation on the autobahn, riders were tacking about a lot and there was lots of half-wheeling and shouts to hold your line, I shouted a few times myself when I saw riders up the bunch skittering about! Not what you want to see when you’re smashing down a road brakeless at around 40kph. The push up to the autobahn was fun rather than punishing this year, I stayed mid bunch and prepared to tuck in down the long straight motorway. I settled in to my gear straight away and felt relieved I had got my gearing right. No one was pushing too hard at the start and I was fine in the wheels and didn’t get jostled about too much in the neutral section. I made space for myself and chose my line through the roundabouts so I could keep my speed. this caught me out last year, I didn’t trust the wheels through the first few obstacles and I dropped myself, there was no way I was letting this happen this year. I knew we had 3 sketchy roundabouts to navigate in the neutralised start before we hit the race proper and rode up on to the autobahn. I stood next to Jess a few other women I knew with wheels I knew I could trust, this was important when the first thing to do is setting off fast and clipping in from a foot-down start, fixed and brakeless! I lined up near the front of the field made up of about 60 women. In contrast to the much earlier start last year the men’s race started at 2:10pm with the women’s race starting 7 minutes after the last men went over the start line, a massive improvement over last year when the women caught the men before the race left the neutralised start. There was a decent head wind and temperatures of 26-27c, a lovely day but knowing what was about to come we probably all wished it was a bit cooler and definitely less windy. I got to the start at midday with the mass race line-up starting from 1:30pm, this felt like an eternity with the sun beating down on us whilst all the riders hid in any scrap of shade they could find. All those Saturday mornings spent at Herne Hill have finally started to pay off! The Fixed 42 race was quite different this year in comparison to my first attempt in 2017, this time I had a much better time in the bunch.
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