It started off on slightly the wrong footing when I was late picking Chris up (due to a cat missing in the attic!) and then we got stuck in traffic on the dreaded M25 and were late to the race venue - ergo no pre-ride. We ate dinner with the Buick family and John Whittington, who had ventured down on his own this time from Bristol and then after being eaten alive by midges got a good nights sleep. Saturday morning we got a good early start and were ready to go out and look at the course at just after 8am. We got to the entrance and were promptly told the course was closed until 9am, a whole hour before my race started and 45 minutes before they start gridding us. It was a bit of a nightmare. We should have just sneaked onto the course somewhere else in retrospect, but we decided to be rule abiding and waited until 9. A quick potter round the course showed it was going to be a hard race, roots were everywhere you didn't want them to be and you seemed to have to slow down and speed up again all the time as the flow through the trees was not great. Despite this I was still feeling pretty positive and lined up on the front row of the grid ready to hit the race head on.
At about 10 past 10 we went off. I got into pretty good position at the front of the pack and going into the singletrack was about 3rd wheel, just where I wanted to be. But then on one of the rooty corners I spun out and ended up in entirely the wrong position and lost a few places. I then spent the rest of the first lap trying to get back up to the front, which won't have helped my energy levels I guess. I caught up with Anna Buick going into the second lap and thought we could have a good ride together. She was riding really well and had some good lines to follow through the trees. When it opened up a bit I went to the front thinking we could keep the same pace and try to get to Maxine Filby and Jess Roberts, who were not that far ahead. However, I must have done this at exactly the wrong time, since Anna was not feeling too good and decided to conserve her energies for later. So I was on my own again.
Towards the end of the second lap I caught up with Maxine and managed to get past when she made a slight mistake. This gave me a good boost and I rode pretty well for a while after that, but on the third lap I really felt like my legs were made of lead. Maxine came back past me and I just had nothing. I was also making loads of silly mistakes in the trees. I survived the rest of the race, but annoyingly could see both second and third place in front of me for a lot of the time. I think I really slowed in the last lap and only just held onto fourth spot. So not a bad result, but not a great one either!
Chris also had a torrid time in the Expert men's race. He is generally a patient racer who is slow out of the start and has to work back to people through the race, but this year it has been really difficult for him to get forward since the Expert field is so fast. This, combined with a crash and a sore knee meant that at Crow the whole thing became a suffer-fest. He sensibly decided to call it a day after 3 laps and I can't really blame him given the size his knee was later on in the day!
Chris racing hard!
There is now a natural break in the NPS scedule, but we are still racing quite a bit! I am off to the Nationals in Scotland in three weeks and will be trying not to be last and Chris has decided to go endurance for the rest of the season, combining the Torchbearer 12 at Newnham Park in Plymouth, the Kielder 100 mile race and hopefully the 3-peaks cyclocross with a few local XC races for good measure. No wonder we never have any money!
No comments:
Post a Comment