Peter Kennaugh, Lizzie Armitstead win British road race titles

Kennaugh is the fourth man to win successive national road race titles in the professional era

Peter Kennaugh and Lizzie Armitstead have won the men's and women's British national road race titles in Lincoln.

Defending champion Kennaugh outsprinted 2013 winner Mark Cavendish on the final cobbled climb to win his second title with Ian Stannard in third.

Armitstead, who was flown to hospital following a crash 11 days ago after winning stage one of the Women's Tour, won from Alice Barnes and Laura Trott.

"The longer the race went on the better I started to feel," said Armitstead.

"It means a lot. I get new kit and I get to be proud of being British in every race I do," the 26-year-old Boels-Dolmans rider added, referring to the fact she will wear the British national champion's jersey in every road race she competes in for the next 12 months.

Armitstead (centre) also won the race in 2011 and 2013

Armitstead, the London 2012 Olympic silver medallist, went clear on the penultimate ascent of Michaelgate in the centre of Lincoln and completed the final eight-mile lap on her own to win her third national title by one minute, 52 seconds.

Olympic track champion Trott said: "Lizzie was in a league of her own - she attacked and that was it. Nobody could follow. She floated up the hill and left the rest of us for dead."

The men's race was a tighter affair with Team Sky trio Kennaugh, Stannard and Luke Rowe, vying for the title with Etixx - Quick-Step's Cavendish on the final lap.

Kennaugh and Cavendish, who both come from the Isle of Man, broke clear in the closing stages and the former had the stronger legs on the final ascent, which has an average gradient of around 16%, winning by five seconds.

"That has got to be one of the hardest races of my career," said Kennaugh, who also hinted that he would be in Team Sky's nine-man squad for the Tour de France which is scheduled to be named on Monday.

"Hopefully I should be part of the team and then let the carnage begin in July."

Cavendish conceded it was always going to be "difficult" given Team Sky's prominence at the front of the race but declared himself "super happy" with his form and to have won the silver medal.

However, he added he would need to get his left shoulder "checked out" before the Tour after he hit a spectator's camera with "three or four laps to go".