November has been a bit quieter on the racing side however I’ve been getting good training in and managed to get in a cyclocross race despite having had to miss the South East CX Champs, which I was looking forward too.
At the very start of the month, I raced at round 6 of the London and SE cx league, taking 2nd again, but this time a few mistakes cost me a win. With a short turnaround between my brother’s race and mine with less than 5 minutes until gridding, I had to clean dad’s bike down, my brother rode on so I could race it. Having to share my dad’s old Flanders he got about 12 years ago definitely isn’t the easiest but hopefully we’ll be able to have our own cross bikes to race on at some point, let alone a spare for the pits. Not the greatest start cost me a bit but I got back up to the front end and did alright there. The course started to get a bit slicker and I ended up sliding out on one of the corners then getting the gap back, but probably not helped as I was running intermediates so they started to clog up. Though, I’ve been loving getting in some good cyclocross skills training in, a couple times each week now and feeling better on the cross bike getting the cross skills back.
Training:
Towards the beginning of the month I was up at Loughborough University for the British Academy camp just for the weekend but next up will be back there in the days before Christmas for a bit of a longer camp with more of a testing focus. I’m looking forward to getting some more accurate ideas of metrics and levels and getting in some more specific tests for the first time. I’ve had some solid training these last 3 weeks especially and some good track sessions, running well in 14:xx minute 5k paces for around 7k of effort, but have been properly been feeling it in the evenings, getting cold now meaning for some serious amount of layers. I’ve been enjoying being able to get out on the bike this winter with the shorter days and running too which has been possible thanks to Knog for sorting out a couple lights for me.
Life:
I was aiming to race the SE Cyclocross Champs last weekend but unfortunately had to pull out on the morning as I didn’t have money for fuel to drive up to Cyclopark. Hopefully I can get a few more racing opportunities, and the same for XC running as I was looking to race the European trials at Liverpool X Challenge, but for now all I can do is just keep going with training which is progressing well and find some more ways of sourcing money.
I’ve made a proper effort again to see if I can gain any sponsorship support but hopefully I’ll be able to gain something more significant in the future and not be restricted with my costs in my sporting journey. I truly wish I can make a positive impact and help others in the same position one day but maybe creating a solution starts with talking about things.
Next weekend I’ll be racing my first cross country race of the season in the Sussex XC League at Ardingly which should be a good run out there.
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