Race Report: SW CX Rd 4, Stover

Race Report: SW XC Rd 4, Stover

            Today was the 4^th round of the South West Cyclo Cross series at Stover School just outside Newton Abbot. We have had a 2 week break from the series, well the majority had but I decided to do the Hell of the West to fill the gap of racing in the series. The hell of the west was an 80Km ‘CX sportive’ across Dartmoor. I won’t go into details of this, but I will say it was probably the hardest cycling thing I have ever done. It sucked and I probably wouldn’t do it again, especially on a cross bike. The majority of people had cross country mountain bikes and oh maan I was jealous of their suspension, disk brakes and fat tyres.

           Anyway, back to today’s events. Stover school grounds created a pretty damn good venue for a cross race. The start/ finish area sat amongst the well manicured sports fields. These fields were rolled so flat there was barely a bump or lump in sight. To the best of my belief, the ground men had also rolled flat 40% of the course especially for the race. However easy this sounds, it was a totally different story due to the fairly high amount of surface water that quickly got churned up at one end of the fields. Despite that, these sections made for good flat-out racing.

       The other 60% on the other hand made use of the not so well kept part of the school. Once you had come of the sports fields, you were met by quick, steep banks and tight turns that led out to a flat out rough, un-kept downhill section. This was a good place to have a bit of a rest and a lot of fun getting loose. But as we all know, what goes down must go up, and this wasn’t the nicest of ups. It was slow going and energy sapping. Even at the top of this climb it didn’t let off. We had to get off, run up some steps then navigate the best way to tackle a couple more short steep grass banks. This would have been ‘moderately’ easy if it wasn’t for large curb sized grass ledges that u needed to hop up and lose a bit of momentum. Not long after this section it was back onto the sports fields. A lap was about 6min 30secs and ended up doing about ten of these.

           My race went pretty well for me today; I got the best finish of the season. Whether it was the extra enthusiasm from my dad coming up and me wanting to show off, or the sibling rivalry of my half brother, Nick, racing and wanting to show him how us Cyclo cross boys do it, I don’t know. But today it helped.

        It was a good turn-out with nearly 60 riders in the main event. I was glad to be near the front at the start. I got off to a pretty good start from the 2^nd row on the grid. At the first hedge line there was a big ol’ puddle, with two small lines around it. I figured people were going to slow up to take these lines. So I made the most of this hopped the big puddle. This put me right at the front with 5 others. Throughout the first lap I worked my way to 2^nd and put up a big gap behind to 3^rd. 1^st position had also started to make a gap. I was able to keep this position for the next 2 laps but 3^rd was catching up. I dropped back to 5 over the next few laps. I held this position for a while. I took on an energy gel about 35-40 mins in to give me the boost to try and not lose 5^th, 6^th was slowly but surely catching me up.

The thick consistency of this made it very difficult
to swallow under race conditions.

I used a Zip Fit Energy gel today, different than the usual Torq gels. It didn’t go down very well. The Zipfit, banana flavour, was way too thick to consume when you’re at your limit and really doesn’t go down very well. The Torq gels are a lot thinner in consistency. For this reason alone, I will be using Torq for the rest of the season.

I would definitely recommend these energy gels. Thin, tasty,
easily swallowed and good energy supply.

With 2 laps to go, 6^th was right on my tail. But 4^th was in my sights; maybe 30secs ahead. The energy started to kick in along with fear of losing position. I stepped my game up and started to leave him on the downhill section. At the turn I kicked hard up the hill to drop him, which I did. I kept this momentum going and caught 4^th not long after the bell for last lap. As I passed him he jumped onto my wheel and could see he wasn’t going down without a fight. Again, I used the momentum gained from the downhill and just stood up and sprinted up the long, lung busting hill. 

He couldn’t match my effort and I rolled home safely in 4^th position, 10 secs clear of 5^th. I was still 3mins back from the winner; he put in a good ride.  I have some more work to do to start challenging for the lead but I’m sure it will come. It’s Just a matter of time.

Thanks for reading again. It’s you guys that comment on my work that keeps me going out there, just so I have something decent to write about.

Race Report: CX RD 3, Barnstaple

 UPDATE: 26/09/12 - i have just found out that i came 6th overall at this race which is pretty sweet!  

 Yesterday, 23^rd September, was round 3 of the south west Cyclo cross in Barnstaple.

I knew that the weather wasn’t supposed to be very good at all for this race but all week it had been pretty dry and I couldn’t help but think, it really can’t be that bad?! I woke up Sunday morning looked out of the window to be greeted by dark grey clouds and loud a spattering of rain on the window. Ughh.. It had started to get really cold this week. I just knew by looking outside, I didn’t want to ride in this dreary weather.

On the brighter side of things, I feel that I’m pretty handy on a bike, skill wise, and I also know, that most of the people riding are rodies. They don’t tend to be very good at cornering, let alone cornering on slick, greasy, muddy corners. I was feeling confident.

           I rocked up to the joint with no problems this week; I probably have to owe that to the latest iphone update, ‘IOS6’. Before on the iphone, you had to rely on Google maps directing you, which is always a bit of a struggle, but included in the new update is, in its simplest term, is a TomTom gps system. This was the first time I used it and the new GPS routing system is very good. It worked without fault. The screen stays lit up so u can always see where you are and how far away the next turning is. There is also a little man in my phone that shouts out which way to go so you don’t even have to look..

           I got out of my toasty hot car and it wasn’t very pleasant outside. I signed on and started putting layers of clothes on. My kit consisted of Bib shorts, low cut socks, an Endura BaaBaa merino base layer, race jersey, arm warmers, windstopper jacket thingy and a one of those sweet cycle caps that go under the helmet. I obviously didn’t wear all of this for the race; this was just to do some warming up in.  The cap and jacket came off just before the start.

               I ran into an instant problem with tyre pressure as soon as I started my first practice lap. The course was very soft and muddy which I decided needed a very low tyre pressure. I set the front & rear tyre to 25psi. I went to bunny hop up a curb and I thought I was going to die! Literally I have never felt so unsafe and out of control on a bike in my life. As soon as I put any pressure on the front end, the tyre rolled over twisting the wheel to the side and nearly throwing me over into the curb. Luckily I got away with it. The rear tyre was absolutely fine and felt very good. 

        I should probably mention that I’m running different tyres front and rear; A Kenda small block 8, 700x32c in the rear, and a vredstrein 700x30c front. I have recently started to not like this vredestrein tyre much and this recent problem has strengthened my view on it. I really need to change it. I find this tyre to tall for its skinny profile and the sidewalls can’t cope with any side loads at pressures below 40psi. It just really isn’t stable at all. Anyway I sorted this by putting the front up to 30psi and coped with the slight rolling.

         The race got underway and I found myself in the top 10 pretty quickly. The course was also pretty lame. It was basically a playing field with lots of corners in it, with one section that went off the field with some stairs to run up back up onto the field..There wasn’t as many people competing this week, maybe 30 plus people. Results still aren’t up as I write, so can’t be sure.

         We got into the first of the tight chicanes and some guy left the door open so I nipped into the gap on the inside. As I did this, I must have caught this guy by surprise because he jack-knifed and fell to the floor creating a gap between the front group and the chasing group.  I was luckily in the leading group. I was following them around for a couple laps and it felt like I was cruising pretty easily so I pushed forward, over took some people and tried to pick the pace up.  

          As time went on, the course started to get very sloppy, especially on the uphill, headwind section of the course. I started to struggle for speed on this section and found two guys closing me down. They both overtook me and I just sat in behind them. As they passed by I noticed they were team mates working together. I found the pace they were going at was pretty good and being sat behind them, really helped on the head wind section. The front runner off this 3 man group started to get away and I found the other guy was defending the inside line on every corner making it pretty difficult to overtake. This didn’t frustrate me as I knew that if I needed to catch up, I wouldn’t have a problem. I decided to bide my time and use this guy in front to keep me feeling fresh. The ‘2laps to go’ sign came out and I figured this would be the lap to bridge the gap that had been created. I followed this guy for about half of the lap, until it came to a straight, fast section where I decided to jump this guy and sprint up to the next. This wasn’t actually very hard and I was right with him in no time.

          Again I sat in behind the next rider for most of the last lap waiting for the moment to make an attack. I followed him around for about half the lap until we got to the uphill, headwind section, where he slowed right up. At first I wasn’t sure if he was out of energy, or trying to slow us both up to let his team mate catch up. Whatever it was I wasn’t sure, so I took the lead, constantly checking over my shoulder, watching both of their movements to make sure they weren’t planning an attack. 

        All of a sudden one of them attacked out of nowhere. I was very quick to react and matched his attack with plenty left for the inevitable final sprint. He got in front of me and started to pick the pace back up. This time, I knew it was just between him and me. We went through the tight chicanes mentioned earlier. Coming out of this section is where I made my attack, knowing there was only 1 slow and 2 very fast turns to the finish. I grabbed hold of the drop bars, shifted through the gears and got my head down. I passed him just before the 1^st fast corner. Whilst cornering, I had to overtake a couple of lappers the long way around making sure I was ahead before the slow corner. Nailed it. But so had he... checking over my shoulder just before the exit, I could see he had closed the gap but this was fine with me. With one fast corner and a slight uphill headwind finish ahead of me, I knew I had to make sure I didn’t fall on the final corner, which would have been easily done under pressure. I checked my speed coming in, not caring if he was right behind me let the brakes go and flew though the corner, foot out, not quite flat out, whilst pedalling one footed. I stomped the other foot back into the pedal, grabbed the drops tightly and hammered it home. I turned around just as I crossed the finish line to realise the other competitor had cut his losses and must have given up not long after the corner. I was well clear.

         This has definitely been my best race so far. I raced and fought to the very end beating a couple of guys who had finished in the top 8 the week previously.  I have improved quicker than I thought from week to week. And, it would be really awesome to keep this momentum going to hopefully challenge for a win by the end of the season.

I have also just noticed how much I have written and I realise this is supposed to be a report, so I apologize for the ‘race essay’... but what you guan do.

Cheers