The end of March saw me enter the start of a huge block of racing, starting on 28th with the first World Cup of the road season, Trofeo Binda in Varese, Italy. Being my second World Cup on the road, in addition to Plouay GP at the end of last season, I knew what sort of standard to expect, as all of the big hitters would be there!

As there isn’t an under-23 category on the road for females, all of the road racing we do is senior women’s so the standard is always pretty high. Basically I knew it was going to be a tough race! Situated in northern Italy, it meant that we were surrounded by beautiful scenery and good weather – but also a lot of hills!

The race included a large lap of about 60km with two nasty, steep climbs and a long dragging ascent, then continued on to an 18km finishing circuit with more climbs to complete the race distance of 136km!

After the first steep climb the race split into about five groups and I ended up in the third group of about 20 along with my team-mate Katie. From this point we rode on towards the finish circuit, keeping the pressure on along the flat to try and catch the group in front but the group was simply too big to work together and there were only about five of us doing any turns on the front, so we never made contact with the main bunch again.

When we entered the finish circuit we were told we had to stop and were pulled out of the race. This can sometimes happen in road racing, as the commissaries (race organisers) have to stop the traffic for the race, so if the race is too split up then this makes it difficult. So, in the name of safety anyone who is too far back has to stop. In fact, over half of the field didn’t finish. However, Nicole finished in sixth which was a good start to her World Cup campaign.