Welsh Cyclocross League Round 7: Melin Mynach Park, Gorseinon

Another trip out west to another familiar, and often muddy, venue. The course on Melin Mynach Park winds down (and of course back up) a hillside and is always heavy going. Despite racing in unseasonably warm sunshine for the first day of November, there was indeed plenty of mud on offer.

Photo by Lucy Harvey

This race would have been the epitome of a solid but unspectacular race for me, were it not for (spoiler alert) the last lap. A decent but not fantastic start slotted me into the top 20. As things settled down I dropped a few riders and spent most of the race close to, but not close enough to catch, the next group ahead of me. As with Carmarthen, the course deteriorated as the day went on, and one long mud section at the bottom of the course became quicker to run than ride.

Suffering in the November heat. Photo by Lucy Harvey.

As I took the bell and prepared myself for one last push, I broke my rear derailleur. There was no point even checking the bike for damage; I switched straight into damage limitation mode and just picked it up and started running to the pits, which were three-quarters of a lap away. I do a bit of cross-country running as part of my training, so I’m used to running through the mud, but nothing could prepare me for the ordeal of running almost a mile carrying a heavy, muddy bike, tired after 50 minutes of racing, and watching competitor after competitor effortlessly pass me as I inched my way towards the pits. According to my GPS, the run took to the pits took me about nine minutes, but it felt like a lifetime. I ran, walked and staggered along, stitch burning in my abdomen. I couldn’t even push the bike along the floor for some respite, because the broken rear mech was fouling the spokes. I got the spare bike from the pits and rode the last 500 metres of the race flat out, powered by pure fury and the chance to re-pass a couple of riders off before the finish. I finished 30th, down from around 15th at the end of the last lap. Not the end of the world, but a disappointing way to end a race.

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.

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.

Welsh Cyclocross League round 4, Aberdare Country Park

An unexpected four week gap between my first and second races of the season, thanks to injury. I felt like I'd lost a little ground, both in terms of scoring points and fitness, having not been able to train as much as I'd like. On the other hand, I was fresh and rested and my bikes were clean and perfectly maintained, as I'd not been able to ride them all that much! Dare Valley Country Park was another new venue on the calendar, or at least one not one I'd raced at before. Despite a very dry first half of October, the course was only 80% dry, traversing low-lying boggy ground twice each lap, one section of which required a long dismount and run, and dragging steadily uphill on either side. Attending one round out of three meant no gridding for me, but fortunately the start was wide open and I got away fairly well from the third row, slotting into the lower reaches of the top 20 at the end of lap one. I then made slow but steady progress for the first half of the race, picking a few more riders off; I was holding my own or losing only a little time on the fast, dry downhill sections of the course, and making up time in the muddy sections and particularly the long drag uphill. The course finished on top of the hill, and in the second half of the race it became clear that I was going to have to make the most of this. Once again I had settled into a group of three riders, becoming two of us in the later stages: just me and Adrian from Forza RT. He was slightly quicker than me on the fast downhill section, so I was pleased to make it to the bottom of this neck-and-neck with him as we entered the long, muddy run. Then, I thought I'd blown it: I stumbled in the mud, bike on my shoulder, and landed on my knees in the mud! Somehow I bounced straight back to my feet and managed to stay with Adrian. There was nothing for it then but to go full gas for the two or three minutes to the finish, and I managed to get a gap of a few seconds and hold onto to it on the uphill drag to the finish line.

Last lap. No pressure. Photo by Helen Breese.

I hung around for coffee in the cafe and post-race presentations, and was pleasantly surprised to earn some prize money for only the second ever time in the Welsh League. I'd come 8th overall, my first top ten finish since 2009. A nice way to get back into the swing of things after injury.

Injury time

I was stiff and sore post-race for a couple of days, which I put down to my hard crash in practice; I got through the race on adrenaline but I was soon seizing up a bit afterwards. Ironically, having got away with no lasting damage from that, I then managed to go over on my ankle walking round the office at work, tearing some ankle ligaments in the process! For the first couple of days I thought I really wasn't sure how much damage I'd done; plenty of rest saw things start to improve and I was able to get gently back on the bike after the first week, but it has taken three weeks, a few trips to the physio, and a lot of ice and stretching to get back to more-or-less normal. Early season plans put on hold then. I'd planned to make the trip up to Aberystwyth two weeks after Llanishen, but although I'd resumed some light training by then, and my heart wanted to race, my head knew it was still out of the question. Ditto for Hereford the following week, a notoriously bumpy and technical circuit and therefore the last place to test out a dodgy ankle.

Welsh Cyclocross League round 1: Llanishen High School, Cardiff

Down to business then. The first proper race of the season was met with anticipation and a certain amount of anxiety. Despite being as well prepared for a cyclocross season as I've ever been, you don't know where you are going to slot into the pecking order until things get underway. The weather forecast added another layer of complexity in the run up to the race; playing a game of "will it rain or not". In the end conditions were dry, and the ground fast, with the rain conveniently holding off until just a few minutes after I'd got home and unloaded the bikes and kit from the car. Round 1 being all of 3 miles from home did mean a nice gentle introduction to the Sunday morning pre-race routine, and a little extra time in bed before heading over for practice. The course was looking fast, but reasonably technical, with no forced dismounts but a few sections that would be tricky to ride and, for the likes of me anyway, meant playing percentages and running with the bike rather than lose time attempting to ride them and making mistakes. Away from those, I managed to crash hard on a fast but fairly straightforward section of the circuit, getting tangled up in the course tape and coming down hard on the back of my head. This was only a few minutes before the start, and at that point I was pleased just to get up and be able to make it to the start line with my ears no longer ringing. It was only after the race that I realised I'd cracked the back of my helmet in the process. Around 140 people signed on, but the organisers had wisely chosen a starting circuit where we could start 20-abreast, meaning I got the luxury of a front row start! I got off the line well, perhaps even a little too well; I was about 10th into the first corner and soon losing touch with the faster folks ahead of me and coming under pressure from riders behind. I therefore slipped backwards a little on lap 1, but still avoided any major bottlenecks.

AJAX team photo post-race. Massive crack in the back of my helmet not pictured.

The pace was blisteringly quick, quick enough to allow for a little drafting on the straights as things settled down. I spent much of the race yo-yoing in and out of a group of three; the other two riders carrying slightly better corner speed than me, whereas I was clawing my way back up to them on the straights and the couple of drags uphill on what was largely a flat circuit. I started the last lap a handful of seconds down on the two of them, and despite emptying the tank on the last lap I couldn't close the gap. I finished 15th overall, exceeding my expectations a little.

Cross is here

So it's been radio silence on here all summer, but now that the autumn approaches I thought I'd resurrect this blog.

So far it's been another year of racing more than ever. In addition to dabbling on the road I've raced a fair bit of cross country. So no excuses for not being race-ready for the cyclocross season. Having said that, after a busy spring and early summer of racing I made sure I took things fairly easy in July and August to make sure I hit the autumn mentally and physically fresh. Late summer is a great time of year to chill out and go for lots of long rides!

A few of us from Ajax have also got an evening cyclocross training group going, which has been great for honing technique and fitness. All in all, I'm as well prepared as I've ever been for a cyclocross season. Will that translate into results? Time will tell, starting with round 1 of the Welsh League on 13 September.