I was lucky enough to be invited to join a team to ride for the East Midlands at the EUC Youth European Mountain Bike Cross Country Championships in Pila, Italy. I was super pleased when I was picked and was ready to race.

The first day was a technical offroad time trial, which was a very short course and was only about two and a half minutes long. Your finish time related to your individual gridding for the final XCO race and in the under 15's team, all our times were added up together to create our gridding number for the relay on the following day.

Moving onto the Second day was the team relay which I really enjoyed because it was a team effort. For the relay you had to do one lap of the big course that we would race that Saturday, and as you came through your lap you had to tap your partner who would be going next. Our plan was the fastest went first so they could get a good start and put the team in a good place and then all the other riders had to do was either pick off more or just hold it.

The third day was a nice rest day where we could relax and prep our legs for the next day. The girls in the two East Midlands teams all chose to have a relaxing morning whilst everyone else either did some down-hill mountain bike trails on the mountain or went for a walk for a few hours. Later in the afternoon we decided to do one easy practice lap just to make sure we were all very confident and were familiar with the course.

Fourth day soon came around and was the big XCO race everyone had been building up to. I really enjoyed it and it was such a good experience and was pleased with my result coming 24^th out of 90. All these girls are selected riders who are coming top in their countries so I knew it was going to be tough from the beginning.

Giving riders another advantage was that they would have been there for a week or just a matter of days to give them the extra time to get used to the thin air because of altitude. Racing at 2000+ metres was always going to be hard.

Loving the technical course was brilliant, because you always have more fun than on a boring course. With climbs being my strength I knew I would have a slight advantage on pulling people in as it was a very hilly technical course much better than anything I have ridden in the UK. Starting in 32^nd place was an ok gridding but just 5^th row back and in the middle of the field. I knew if I wanted a good result then I would just need to keep catching and catching and pulling them in.

I loved every second of it and definitely want to go back next year.

Thankyou JHMT for your support in making it happen.