Coming up to the Christmas period, I’ve had a couple races and a short break from racing before kicking off the new year on the first weekend racing the Sussex xc Champs. A chance to qualify for UK Inter Counties, and hopefully race after getting covid last year. It’s now at a new location – Wollaton Hall, a venue of which I’m sure I’ve raced at pretty much every winter for various national events.
Stanmer Sussex League XC
The first weekend of this month, I was racing at Stanmer Park in Brighton for a very chilly Sussex league cross county round. Being the 3rd round of 4 and finishing 1st and 2nd before I had a good chance to secure the overall league win (I think) as well. Moving up to 5k as a first-year U17, I had a course extension adding another decent climb to the course.
I stayed in the group for the first 2km lap, and felt comfortable then attacked on a small hill to try and get a lead. One athlete managed to close back to me, new to Sussex from Surrey and the pace got quicker. I managed to hold on for a decent amount and a gap started to stretch from me, on the hill, as I tried to stay with him. I could really feel my arms on the hill and had chosen not to wear arm sleeves, so one small thing for me from this race – keep your body warm when you can for better working muscles. Anyway, I was still ‘pushing and at the top it was about a kilometre all downhill into the finish, through the woods before and then into the field. I chose to wear trail shoes – my Inov8 Mudclaws instead of spikes because of the fairly long stone path section – and trying to push on went a bit too fast into one of the corners and ended up falling on the wet leaves and stones. I managed to get up quickly and pushed on until the finish, 20 seconds off 1st. I was pretty happy with a solid 2nd to a strong runner and pushed through the race but would maybe change a couple things next time. With 2nd I’m pretty sure I’ve won the Sussex overall, but soon I’ll find out properly at the last round.
My first National Cyclocross
Despite racing cyclocross since the very beginning I’ve never competed in a National round but coming from the North and Devon to a much closer Cyclopark, an hour away, it was a good chance to race and try and get some ranking points too. After managing to get a new cross bike instead of riding my dad’s older frame from Belgium, I cleaned it up in the week and got a bit of practice on it, which was all good for the Sunday.
After some course adaptions due to it being too long, the course was properly muddy but due to no real rain over the weekend the mud was just sticky and with no pit bike, by the end of the practice my bike was fully caped in mud.
I was at the very back on the start grid, gridded in around 70th, but in a way meant I could really only go forwards in position. Finding my way through a decent amount of riders during the race I got to a point where progress through riders started to slow a bit. I had a couple of crashes and falls, being taking out by other riders and going into a tree after coming out a rut but ended up running a fair amount as it was quicker. My last lap was probably my best as I made up some more places and put in a more attacking style of racing to gain some more places. In the end I finished 26th, close with a few riders but another decent result considering where I started and the amount of cyclocross racing I’ve done, but again as with all racing really learnt some good things to take into future racing.
East Kent Cx – Lydden Hill
After no east kent league cx races I was at the back on the start but it wasn’t too bad as there weren’t many people racing. I went on the outside and left a bit of a gap to the row ahead to kind of slingshot my way to the front. By the first grass section, less than half a minute in, I was in the lead and managed to extend it to about 2 minutes over the coming laps. At the beginning of the last lap of four, I went a little wide on an off-camber section and clipped the course stake and ended up wrapping the course tape round my cassette and disc. The tape was more like strong ribbon so after unwrapping it a few times and having to take my rear wheel off, dropping me down to 3rd and losing +30/45s to the leader, I had about a lap to make up some time quickly. I managed to catch up to the leader over half way in and still managed to get the win and a 30s lead. It was a good course at Lydden Hill and was happy to get back despite the trouble on the last lap.
Training
Also Sussex Endurance Squad training photos at stanmer:
Thanks for reading. 😉
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