Welsh Cyclocross League Round 5: Brecon Leisure Centre

I seem to like to follow a good result with a bad one in 'cross; after a decent race at Aberdare, today was a shocker. Brecon is a regular on the Welsh League circuit, and I've raced here many times, so I knew roughly what to expect. This year was a little different though, as the race had been awarded Category A status, attracting a particularly strong field for a round of the Welsh League. Looking at the start list it was clear that (on paper at least) there was no chance of repeating last week's top ten finish; a top 25 would be a more realistic aim. It had been another dry week in Cardiff but the microclimate of the Brecon Beacons conjured up some light rain on the drive over on Sunday morning. The circuit, around leisure centre playing fields, made good use of a couple of sections of banking that were left greasy by the rain and had a few steep or cambered sections. Everything was rideable in practice, but it would be tricky to ride all of it without making mistakes, even more so as legs tired and the course got cut up. Practice involved a lot of riding and running different lines around the trickiest corners, and agonising over tyre and tyre pressure choices. I was gridded this week, very flatteringly someone had decided I should be on the second row, alongside a lot of top quality riders and with most of those I benchmark myself against starting behind me. I managed to throw away all this advantage off the line, missing my pedal and taking a couple of revolutions to get clipped in. I drifted back far enough to get caught up in chaos as we hit the technical sections for the first time. As everyone was forced to run a tricky camber, I lost my footing and slipped over, enough to cost me a handful of places. Later in the lap I was forced down again as a rider ahead of me slipped; another handful of places lost. As things started to settle down, I tried to make some progress back up through the field, but it wasn’t really happening. I was struggling to put the power down in a straight line, and making far too many mistakes in the technical sections. A couple of laps of trying to drop a small group ended with them dropping me instead. By now I was getting into a downward spiral; frustrated, I was mentally losing my cool and concentration, culminating in tripping and falling on a dismount over the planks. From then on it was damage limitation: I drifted backwards, getting caught by rider after rider, powerless to stay with them as they passed me. Just when matter couldn’t get worse, I started to bonk completely on the last lap, and crossed the line utterly spent and shaking from head to toe, having wrung out every last drop of energy and desperate for some food. I finished 36th. I have no idea what happened here. Could have just been an off day, could have been not eating enough in the morning. I did feel a little under the weather in the days beforehand, so I may have also been brought down by a bit of latent illness. A Sunday to forget in any case.