Welsh Cyclocross League Round 6: Carmarthen Showground

The middle Sunday of a block of five race weekends in a row. I put Brecon behind me and settled into the familiar pattern that the weeks now followed, leading up to every Sunday. The blow of a 65-mile drive to Carmarthen Showground was softened somewhat by the clocks changing, making what would otherwise have been a pretty early start one hour more bearable. After a largely dry start to the season, Carmarthen got us down to the business of plugging through mud. The course wound around a couple of fields that, following a Saturday of heavy rain, ranged from muddy to completely saturated. Further showers through the morning promised that the course would deteriorate as the day went on. The start was an 800m charge along a (relatively) dry gravel section to string the field out, then straight into one of the worst sections of mud. I got a good start this week, but this was undone by someone coming down in front of me on one of the first muddy corners. I was out by the tape on the left-hand edge of the course with nowhere to go, and literally had to come to a standstill whilst the downed rider picked his bike up and got going again, all the time watching the pack stream past on my right hand side. By the time we got going again I found myself down in about 30th place. My first thought was ‘another bad first lap; here we go again,’ but I buried those thoughts and kept my cool, helped by the encouraging sign that I was able to pick off riders steadily. Around half the lap was deep thick mud that soon spread the field out. Back-breakingly hard work though it is, these are conditions that I enjoy, trying to use power smoothly and looking for the constantly-changing least-worst lines. By around half distance I found myself following Adrian from Forza once again, and the two of us stayed more or less together until the finish, pushing each other on, catching and dropping a few more riders ahead of us in the process. With two laps to go I took a clean bike; the number one bike was riding OK, but I had watched the rear derailleurs of a couple of competitors succumb to the mud, and Adrian pitted at the same time so no time was lost. The lap finished with the only real technical section of note; two times up and down a small bank that was badly cut up. Adrian was notably smoother and faster than here, so to beat him I was going to need try and drop him somewhere before this on the bell lap. Halfway round the last lap I launched an all-or-nothing attack and got a gap of a few seconds. Now just the simple matter of burying myself to the line. I hung on to finish just ahead of Adrian and 7th overall, one place better than Aberdare and my best ever Welsh League finish.