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Over the next few weeks we will introduce you to our Women Ambassadors. Located in different cities, states and regions around the world these wonderful ladies have been charged with investigating and reporting back on the different roles that women play within their cycling communities. This will also be an opportunity for us to help shine the spotlight on a few of the fantastic women that we have come to meet over the course of our history.
Now expanded for Spring/ Summer 2012, the Rapha Women’s collection offers key training and racing products with optimum function and form for women riders.
If you’ve ever been passed in a race by someone half your age (it happens to all of us), you’ve probably felt the pain and embarrassment when instead of just pummeling you as she rides off into the distance, she turns and cheers you on. This is that girl. One of the nicest, talented young riders around, Emily Barnes comes from one of the UK’s most gifted families in cycling and is making a name for herself on the road, the track and muddy fields around the country. Here’s a very short introduction.
A big race looms on the horizon. Until a couple of months ago, I managed to all but put off everything but the most basic of training, favoring learning how to ride a mountain bike over actually putting in hard miles on the road. Work was taking over my life with several consecutive days off the bike loosening my grip. Minor injuring hummed in my trapeziums at night and left me tired every morning. On top of it all I decided to move in with my boyfriend, to simplify things of course. This was the year I’d decided to train like a pro. What had happened? Guilt compounded with fear and denial.
Rapha will be headline sponsors of the London Women’s Cycle Racing League (LWCR) in 2012. Established in 2010, the league is a series of grass-roots races in London and the South East catering for the growing number of women taking up competitive cycling. A great platform to introduce newcomers to racing, the league allows riders to develop their skills and learn how to race.
Rapha-FOCUS racer Julie Krasniak checks in with a short, personal recap of her recent Cyclocross World Cup race in Zolder, her first in Belgium. Julie spent the majority of her first season of cross in the US, competing in USGP events, Cross Crusade and even getting in some time in the Los Angeles sun. But her return to European soil has proven difficult. During a week known as Christmas Cross, Julie was reintroduced to the dark and dreary conditions that can be a feature of the European cross scene. Having raced in both the Plzen and Tabor World Cup events in the Czech Republic, where she finished 25th and 24th respectively, how would she fare in Belgium?
Photos by Gem Atkinson
On Saturday, a group rode from Richmond Park to Windsor for a seasonal jaunt out of the city. Hosted by Rapha riders Collyn Ahart and Gem Atkinson, here’s an account from the front and the back.
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Gem from the back: As fifteen fast females forgathered in a well known South West London location on a freezing morning, you could be forgiven this was a missing part of a festive rhyme involving such frivolities as a partridge and a pear-tree etc etc. However festive and yuletide the ride intended to be, the cruelly timed rain at the onset of the ride quickly threatened to put a dampener on any mirth-like feelings.
