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Cycling: Vision 1 Racing team blog

May 11, 2024

Helen Wyman, a professional cyclist riding for Nicole Cooke’s Vision 1 Racing team, blogs exclusively for Sportsister about life in the saddle.

This is me

My name is Helen Wyman and I am a professional cyclist riding for Nicole Cooke’s Vision 1 Racing team. I have been National Cyclo-Cross Champion for four years and have numerous successes on the road including winning the National Road Race Series and King of the Mountain jerseys in International stage races.

Training to race

When you race every weekend of every month of every year you tend to think time off is a nice idea. That is until you can’t race, then you tend to think time off is awful!

This year a crash in the first 300metres at the world cyclo-cross championships left me with a knee injury that meant a slightly longer than anticipated break before the road season. (I’m the one in the red Great Britain team kit pictured below.)

When you have an enforced rest of longer than the obligatory three weeks, training becomes a much more important factor to getting yourself race fit again. Road racers know this very well as they often have a six week break at the end of the season and start increasing their training gradually over the next three months to be race ready by the end of March. However I have never taken this time as cyclo-cross is my favourite discipline and giving it up would be like letting go of your favourite chocolate cake just as you were about to take the first mouthful! Training from absolutely nothing compared to training after a short well planned break is very different to me.

Living in a team house, it is not difficult to find people to train with which helps when you are riding for five hours. When you are with a group of people the time definitely passes quicker especially if they make you laugh a lot! Recently I took the girls training in the Ardennes, the really hilly region of Belgium. Contrary to popular belief and a well known drinks advert in England, Belgium is not entirely flat with mud fields, cows and strong winds (although I may have seen some places fitting this description). The highest point is 654metres from sea level which makes for 6km climbs, perfect for our training.

The language barrier

Within our team we have a mix of different nationalities with varying levels of English. From Australian - apparently the same language as ours, to French riders with ever progressing English skills and our token Dutch rider squished in the middle.

My parents once went cycle-touring in Holland and were disastrously lost just as dusk was falling looking for their campsite so decided to stop and ask a local. After establishing communication the man stated he spoke very bad English, to which my parents started to panic a little, but thought they could try anyway. Pointing at the map and making random hand gestures to demonstrate a tent they asked where the campsite was. To which the man replied ‘Argh you mean Willem’s place, that’s really nice I have been there many times for the café, they serve a very nice cappuccino you know. So the campsite is here on the right, then take the first left, after 300metres you will see the entrance. Send him my greetings’. Hmm maybe he just had high standards of what good language skills are!

Some of the team training in the Belgium Ardennes from left to right: Gabby Day, Vicki Whitelaw, Debby Van Den Berg and Helen Wyman

Some of the team training in the Belgium Ardennes from left to right: Gabby Day, Vicki Whitelaw, Debby Van Den Berg and Helen Wyman

Debby, our Dutch rider, fits into the same category! As I’m sure everyone knows in mainland Europe distances are measured in kilometres. Debby’s English is now at such a high level that not only does she know how to offend and argue in English she also uses our common phrases. When Stef, our director sportive, once showed Debby on a map how far we had left to drive she replied with ‘But that’s miles away’. To which he asked ‘Do you have any concept of how far a mile is?’ Giggling she replied ‘No, but it doesn’t sound right in kilometres!’

Luckily for us the weather here in Belgium has been above average for a while now with sunny days and temperatures reaching above 20 degrees already. On the day we went to the Ardennes the weather was again amazing with clear skies and beautiful sunshine the whole day. We set off on a new route that I hadn’t used before, it went straight up a 10% climb…oops, where we dropped a couple of the older American guys who we had taken with us and had intended to stay with us for an hour then do their own thing. After that we settled into the ride nicely, only separating a little on the climbs and regrouping at the top.

On the last climb of the day while riding slowly and waiting for the two older guys who had managed to stay within eye sight we started to chat. As the playful joking increased so did the speed and we were soon disappearing out of eye shot again. Slightly irritated by mine and Debby’s obvious lack of awareness of where the Americans were, Vicki instructed us to slow down and stop getting carried away. To which Debby started laughing and stated ‘but no ones carrying me anywhere’ whilst making the actions of being carried. You have to love the English language especially when a foreigner points out our inaccuracies!

Training indoors

Since our trip to the Ardennes the weather has not always been so favourable and last week we actually had rain. Based on the fact that girls are made of sugar and spice and all things nice, we obviously dissolve in the rain and so had to turn to our new CycleOps turbo trainers.

We have a complete set of indoor CycleOps trainers and rollers which come complete with a DVD simulating stages of major races which you can watch whilst training. As indoor training can become a little bit tiresome I decided to have a go with the DVD. Watching the riders whilst training was definitely entertaining and provided much more motivation to train harder than the usual ‘Cash in the Attic’ or ‘Bargain Hunt. Although I’m defiantly still a fan of ‘To Buy or not to Buy’, Christian is just pure entertainment!

If any one had visited the house on that day they would probably have wondered what kind of place it was with every room being occupied by girls on static trainers. If only I’d had the time to take pictures of us all, but then I guess sometimes training just gets in the way!

Helen Wyman, Sportsister
The Women’s Sports Magazine

You can read more from Helen about her life as part of the Visoin 1 Racing Team next month. Or if you want to read our recent interview with Helen then just click here.

More info: www.vision1racing.com/

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