By Ed.
This weekend, across the land, each region had its cyclocross championships. Ours was combined with the Eastern region to make it twice as hard – cheers guys!
The course was very traditional with lots of wide, muddy track and a big hill to go up twice per lap.
I held back a little in the first couple of laps as I’ve not got much experience of riding in these conditions and didn’t want to put myself out of the race with too many silly crashes (got away with just one minor fall but plenty of close calls as the bike slid around on the muddy surfaces).
Mid race I realised I was seeing the same people ebbing and flowing around me as we raced and so it developed into a more concerted effort into try to beat them. Jon Lyons, my usual nemesis proved very useful in gauging how I was doing as our fitness is similar at the moment but his skills are way superior to mine. Basically he got away from me on the descents and I passed him on the climbs.
Going into the last lap I knew if I could stay on his wheel then I’d be able to beat him on the final sprint up the hill and so it proved, however halfway up the hill I came alongside two other riders giving it their all. I’ve never raced so hard in my life and I took them both to catapult from 12th place to 9th in the last 20 seconds of the race.
Job done!
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