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  • Procycling

    A RIDE WITH LIZZIE

    Dec 29, 2021 5 minutes
    Writer: Edward Pickering
    Photography
    : Chris Auld

    You cannot separate a rider from their training routes, especially when it’s the ones they grew up on. Lizzie Deignan is having a quick blast around a circuit called the ‘After School Loop’, a grippy 12-mile loop starting and finishing in Otley, taking in the countryside to the northwest of the town. The After School Loop is as prosaic a name as you could get for a training route - Deignan used to ride around it after school. What else would you call it?

    Otley sits in the valley of Wharfedale, but there are hills in all directions, especially to the north and south, and so the After School Loop is mostly up and down. It climbs out of Otley on the B6451, one of those two-lane British roads that is neither busy nor quiet, then descends to the river

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