Being a National Champion means a lot to me. It shows me that all the effort I put into training actually helps a lot when it comes to racing. It made me feel proud to have the title and gave me a sense of achievement. I wouldn’t necessarily say it has changed my life in any way because I still put as much effort in to what I do now as I did before I was a champ. It’s definitely made me able to do a lot more things and has put my name out there for people to get to know who I am.
Is it not something I aimed for, not at all. 2011 was my first year that I was able to race and I just slowly made my way into local competitions. I was nowhere near the top of my category, as I could not put a full run together without coming off my bike! In the winter I started to ride loads more than I had and started training a lot in the gym and on different kinds of bikes. Coming into the 2012 season I was feeling really fast and unexpectedly won the first national. After this my confidence was high and I continued to do well at races. Coming into the second round of the BDS I felt faster than ever, however I had a pretty bad crash and managed to break my hand. Then about a month after I started to get back into downhill again I stupidly rode into a tree and broke my hand again.
It had been very difficult to get to the top of my category, but once I was there and I had confidence it was quite easy to do well at races, but once I stopped riding my confidence was knocked and I thought there was no way I could win. But I was determined to win and tried as hard as I could to do so. I started to worry a bit and I started to do worse and worse at races. So I think confidence has a lot to do with doing well at races.
I was very worried I was going to miss the National Champs because of my injury but I did not want to miss any more races, so we ended up heading down anyway. I took practice very easy because my hand was still very weak and I did not want to damage it anymore. On Sunday I took a few painkillers and went for it. My run was fairly decent compared to how I had been riding, but I thought there would be no chance I could take the win. When the results were announced I was very surprised to be first.
After the champs riding with the jersey at races made me stand out a lot more and put pressure on me to do well. I found I started trying too hard and pedalling in unnecessary places and making a lot more mistakes. It has made me work a lot harder towards races because I know I want to become national champ again in the future.
