I’m Jonathon Hilbourne, I raced for Glasgow Riderz at the Youth Tour of Scotland.

I had an amazing time and the experience was something I would love to do again. We started off the weekend on Friday, where we went out for ride to go around Saturday’s and Monday’s courses.

Saturday morning I woke up and was feeling excited for the race, nervous but excited. We warmed up in the bike store in a line, the warm up was lead by Innes and Neil just talked to us about the race. We rode down to the course and rode half of it to arrive at the start line we talked nervously and prepared ourselves, we had to wait for a bus to pass before the race began, we were there a while. The commissaires gave us the pre-race talk. They cleared the course for us to start. 3. 2. 1. Whistle blows. We all sprint off the start, five seconds later I hear a crash, people go down in front of me. I swerve around them narrowly avoiding a bike.

The race was stopped for a few minutes and then it was started again, the car pulled off and it began properly, the race was hard and there were a lot of crashes but I stayed up. At one lap to go I moved to the front and stayed there, at 1k to go there was suddenly a crash and I was pushed back in the bunch and I lost my place coming 31st with the same time as the bunch. We rode home and prepared for the Sunday racing. Later on we had a teamwork workshop with Ben Greenwood.

The next day we got changed and packed Neil’s car and we headed over to Perth, when we arrived we set up our rollers and got our gears checked, we had to wait a while before we could begin our warm up. We began it with Innes leading it again, and we headed to the start line where we were gridded, for the first lap my gear changed into the little ring some how, causing me problems but I got back on. The course did not suit me and I struggled. I did not do as well as the day before but I went up a few places in GC. The next race played out similarly but there was a very bad crash and they stopped and cancelled the race. They based it off the last full lap and I retained my position in GC. Later on we had an Easter egg hunt but someone had already found ours and told us where they were.

The next day was extremely difficult. The course had a steep hill and then muddy potholes and speed bumps. I struggled early on but I moved up near the end and overtook a lot of people on the hill and took a 17th in the kermesse course.

Overall in GC I came 21st and  5th Scottish boy. It was an amazing experience and thanks to Braveheart Fund and the Rotary Club for the help with finances and for sponsoring me and of course thanks to Neil MacLeod for being an amazing coach and keeping us going.
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