Welsh Cyclocross League Round 12: Pembrey Country Park

After being cancelled earlier in the month, the ever-popular Pembrey venue was rearranged to the last round of the series. Pembrey is all sandy well-draining ground and brings a welcome reprieve from plugging through the mud in December. Always fast, and normally something of a crit on grass, this year saw a shift to a different part of the park, butting right up to the beach and featuring some proper sections of sand.

I made an early start for the drive out west, aiming to have plenty of time to ride a brand new course and, having never ridden a course with a big sand component before, find a bike setup that I was happy with. The course was indeed something completely different: a long full-throttle section of fireroad to begin the lap, then a track that meandered up and down through the sand dunes, sometimes on hard-packed sand, sometimes through loose stuff. The lap ended with a bigger hill; up a set of steps and down a sandy dune to the finish line. It promised to be fast, with the only opportunity to catch my breath coming in the 30 seconds or so it took to ride down the descent to the finish each lap (a good job, as the run up the steps was sure to put me deep into the red).

I'd driven over through some heavy showers early in the morning, but it had stayed dry for the kids' races. No such luck for the main race, as the heavens opened just as we lined up at the start line. What had already felt like a barely adequate warm up (skipping my usual intervals for one more last-minute tempo ride around the course) now felt completely inadequate as I stood damp and shivering on the start line. Like I said Pembrey is always a popular race, and had indeed attracted a strong field, with all the main Welsh League protagonists in attendance looking for one more good result. The start - almost a kilometre flat out along a gravel fire road, promised to be fast and ruthless.

GO! 0 to 25 mph over gravel, banging bars and shoulders. Love it (I think). Photo by Howard Goldberg/Behnaz Dye

I got a good getaway from the second row, but got caught up in a little more body contact than I'm comfortable with at 25 mph as everyone jostled for position, and I dropped back to about 20th place. Despite a bit of rubbing of shoulders, the long open start did a good job of stringing the field out before we hit the technical stuff. I held my own reasonably well through the dunes, and avoided any major carnage on the descent back to the finish. The laps then flew by in a familiar pattern: a two-minute time trial along the fireroad; try to stay neat and tidy through the dunes; leg it up some steps and try not to lose too much time on the descent to the finish. Whilst I was riding this descent where some were running, I certainly wasn't as fast or as confident down it as some of my competitors. This had a knock-on effect on the start of the lap; this section was fast enough to allow a bit of drafting, but inevitably began with me trying to chase down the rider or group of riders who had put a few seconds into me on the descent.

Leg it up a sand dune, try not to throw up at the top, slide down the other side. Photo by Howard Goldberg/Behnaz Dye

As I accelerated down the fireroad for the fifth time, I felt the tell-tale feeling of a rear tyre that was softer than it should be. Yep, I had a puncture (the culprit was pretty obvious when I checked the bike afterwards - a wayward safety pin from somebody's race number was sticking out of my tyre!)... My first thought was to pack it in - only a good result could improve my position in the overall standings, and I wasn't going to get one now - but pride told me to get back to the pits and continue on the spare bike.

I got most of the way down the fireroad before the tyre lost all pressure, so I only had to limp over a few hundred metres of hard ground and then the rest of the lap was sand. This proved to be pretty rideable with zero psi in my rear tyre! Unfortunately I had nobody in the pits for me today, so it took me what felt like forever to find my spare bike when I got there. Oh well, the rest of the race was really going to be just for fun and pretty meaningless now, I thought.

I did three more laps on the spare bike, trying to work as hard as I had been before. I managed to catch and pass a few people who had overtaken me as I made my way slowly back to the pits, but I wasn't taking it entirely seriously any more, exemplified by exchanging end-of-term pleasantries and/or banter with a few riders as I lapped them, and when I caught some traffic on the climb up the steps, I was quite happy to plod up behind them rather than barge past at full gas.

I finished in 29th place - I was quite pleasantly surprised not to be further down the field - which was a completely irrelevant result in terms of the overall league, but other results had gone my way, meaning I hung on to my existing position in the overall standings.

That brings us to the end of another Welsh Cyclocross League season. It's been a busy, tiring and intense few months, but it's all been a lot of fun and a great series to be part of. More friends have been made, and more (hopefully friendly!) rivalries have been forged. No cycling discipline is as friendly as cyclocross, and meeting up with the same people week in and week out makes for a great little community. The atmosphere, with races for all ages and abilities, also can't be beaten, and neither can the quality of the cakes often being sold out of a rain-lashed gazebo. I've said it before but it bears repeating: the atmosphere at a cyclocross race is a little like that of a village fete, but one where nobody is surprised or disappointed by terrible weather.

This has been another year of racing not only cyclocross for me, but also road and cross country. Despite racing a season that began on the road in late February, I'm feeling less tired than this time last year. In fact, although the main event of Welsh League is over, I'm eyeing up a few other races over Christmas, and I may well put a bike in the back of the car and head off to one more race before the end of year. Then again, I might just treat myself to a slice of normal life over Christmas and put my feet up. Or if I'm feeling energetic, have a walk down to the pub.

Welsh Cyclocross League Round 11: Mountain View Ranch, Caerphilly

I skipped round 10 because everybody did: it was cancelled due to bad weather. I know what you're thinking: it must take some pretty exceptionally bad weather to cancel a cyclocross race. Well the combination of a course situated on a stretch of coastline exposed to the full force of the Atlantic Ocean and said ocean offering up severe gales for Sunday led to, if you'll pardon the pun, the perfect storm. Cyclocrossers will put up with most things, but nobody wants to race in 70mph winds or have a tree fall over on them, and the organisers had no choice but to cancel. Suddenly faced with a free weekend, I took the rare opportunity to do what normal people do on Sundays at this time of year: Christmas shopping followed by Sunday lunch.

After a two-week break from racing, normality (or dysfunctionality, depending on your views on shopping and telly vs bikes and mud every weekend) was well and truly restored this weekend. Before my race on Sunday, Saturday was a trip up to Builth Wells to help Claire out competing in a cross country (running) race: I had the relatively easy supporting jobs of clapping a bit and trying my best to help Claire get warm and dry again afterwards; she arguably got the harsh end of the bargain with a shift in the pits on Sunday, cleaning and swapping bikes for me.

Mountain View Ranch was a new course last year and a total mudfest; after a few very wet weeks of weather, this year promised to be no different. To make the most of home advantage I nipped up in the week and rode the course; it was a similar layout to last year and sure enough very wet. The next morning I hear from the organisers that they had decided it was too wet and have come up with a completely different layout! So I made time for another quick ride up the hill on Saturday morning to have a look. Even speaking as someone who relishes slogging through deep mud, it was a change for the better with more of a mixture of surfaces and also a few more interesting features: more climbing and descending, and a couple of fairly technical bits to contend with on the way down the hill. Still lots of mud too though.

After a long day in the car on Saturday, the luxury of racing a ten-minute drive from home was most welcome: no early alarm clocks and time for a leisurely breakfast before leaving the house. Knowing this was going to be a muddy one, I got a couple of wet and muddy practice laps done in plenty of time to clean the bike and put on clean dry kit, then headed off to warm up on the road.

The start was a 100 metre charge over grass and straight into some of the heaviest going on the course. The thing that sticks in my mind from the first few seconds of the race is sensation of cold, wet, muddy water hitting me from every angle. After that you're not really getting any wetter and you barely notice it.

I got a decent getaway, but picked the wrong lines in the first few mud sections - always a bit of a lottery - and slipped back a bit. Not the end of the world in these conditions, and I settled to the task of methodically picking people off ahead of me. Soon I was catching up with Mike, another AJAX rider who had made a good start. This is Mike's first full season of cyclocross and he has got better and better as the season has progressed - I think I may be seeing him ahead of me quite a lot of the time next year. Mike and I settled into a group of four that spent the middle part of the race pushing each other hard, with nothing more than a few seconds between us at any point. Great racing.

Some course-side mascots. Photo by Clare Dallimore

The stream crossing: how not to ride it. Photo by Behnaz Dye

By the middle of the race the course was a total mess; sections that had been rideable earlier in the day were now to cut up to the point where they were, at best, a choice between whether it was quicker to run or try and ride. A particular highlight near the end of the lap was ploughing through a stream crossing with a dead turn afterwards followed by a small rise. By mid race, water dragged along the course by the passage of wheels had turned this into a somewhat longer puddle followed by 20 metres of uphill through rim-deep slop. Busy with the challenges of looking for clean (figure of speech!) lines and sheer pain management, at some point I realised that the three other riders I had been racing were nowhere to be seen. Where did everybody go?! I had no idea whether they were now ahead of me or behind me! Glancing back on open stretches of the course, I caught glimpses of Mike and one other rider behind me, but I couldn't see anyone ahead of me, so it was just a case of keeping a gap, plugging on and praying for the sound of the bell.

Giving the commissaires my "Please ring the bell now" look. Photo by Clare Dallimore

I was taking bike changes every two to three laps (thank you to the long-suffering Claire and the ever-helpful Doug in the pits), and as I took a clean bike with two laps to go, I soon realised something wasn't right with the drivetrain. As I rode downhill to the bottom the course, I could feel the chain slacken and tighten again before being dumped off the front chainring altogether. I stopped to put the chain back on, normally a job that just takes a few seconds, but as soon as I spun the pedals, it was dumped back off again. Try again and this time it stayed put, but I got going again only in time to see Mike catch up and overtake me! The silver lining to this cloud was seeing the leaders come past at the same time, putting me a lap down but making this my final lap. Not knowing whether my chain could be trusted anymore, I ran the entire of the climb up the course - luckily for me this was now so cut up that there was nothing to choose between running and riding this. As I remounted at the top I managed to pass Mike and get a gap of a few seconds, and mercifully the chain stayed where it should (cleaning bikes at home, the culprit revealed itself in the form of a small stone wedged up against one of the jockey wheels). I just hung on over the finish line, the two of us separated by less than a bike length. We finished 7th and 8th overall.

Welsh Cyclocross League Round 9: Gilwern Outdoor Centre, Abergavenny

After a weekend off, the final third of the season begins with a short drive to Gilwern near Abergavenny, the first of four races in five weeks before the end of the Welsh League.
Mud was on the agenda before I even got on the bike; access to the car park was through a muddy field which required momentum and commitment to get the car through without getting stuck! Fortunately us cyclocrossers are comfortable with sliding through the mud, just normally on only two wheels. I raced here last year, and found the course similar: quite technical, with a fast descent and a long muddy climb each lap. I didn’t go particularly well here last year; and I had a feeling that, like Newtown, I was going to lose out to the people who were faster in the technical sections than me. Looking around as we lined up before the start, I also noticed that this was a very strong field, with all the main Welsh League protagonists in attendance plus a few strong English riders making guest appearances from over the border. This was going to be a tough one then. I got a good start this week and made sure I moved up before we hit the first corner. I then spent the first couple of laps drifting back down the pecking order: sure enough I was losing time in the twisty, slippery sections of the course, and on the fast muddy downhill through the woods. I settled in though, and made up what time I could on the power sections and the climb. Although I rode it in practice, this climb was definitely quicker to run, and the preceding 100 metres was so muddy that it made sense to dismount for that too, pick the bike up and run the whole section. This made for a total of about 1 minute of running each lap - suddenly those running intervals I’d been doing in training all autumn seemed worth it.

Carrying a perfectly rideable bicycle up a hill. Photo by Behnaz Dye.

As the race went on, much of the surface evolved from slippery grass to more playdough-like mud. This suited me more - there was more grip so less tiptoeing round corners, and the energy-sapping surface was hurting some of those I was racing more than it was hurting me. I went into the last lap just behind two riders I’d been with for all of the second half of the race, and my strategy was clear: stay as close to them as possible through the twisty sections (where they were both a little quicker than me), and then go 100% from the bottom of the climb, as the finish line was only a short stretch of tarmac beyond this. No longer interested in bike preservation, I rode the first of the mud this time, overtaking one rider in the process, and then ran full gas up the climb to pass the other. I was deep into the red at the top, but a glance over my shoulder as I turned onto the tarmac straight to the finish showed I had got the gap I needed. I finished 23rd.

Welsh Cyclocross League Round 8: Trehafren Fields, Newtown

The fifth weekend of racing in a row. I was keen to get one more result in the bag but also looking forward to a weekend off. This was also the longest drive of the season: Newtown is just over 100 miles away, so I treated myself to a night in a bed and breakfast, an 8 o’clock alarm and someone else to prepare my pre-race breakfast. I’d heard the course here was quite technical, and indeed it was. The first half of the lap was a straightforward blast across flat parkland - albeit into a strong headwind, but the return leg meandered up and down a wooded hillside, featuring a long run up a flight of steps and a couple of rooty, muddy downhills in the woods that would not have looked out of place on a cross country course. Rain was forecast but never really arrived, but the course was coated with enough sticky mud and leaves to bring bike changes into play. Fortunately my team-mate Craig had made the trip from Cardiff as well, with Doug, his ever-present and helpful dad, who did a great job in the pits for me. The race started with the long straight grassy section, and the headwind made things reminiscent of a road race, as a large bunch sat in behind those who toiled on the front in the wind. I lost out in the first couple of pinch points, but got through lap one just about cleanly, surviving having someone directly behind me crashing on a technical section, hitting my back wheel hard but not doing any damage or taking me down with him. It soon became clear that, fun as it was, this was not a course that suited me all that well. I was getting round all the technical sections, but not as fast as the good bike handlers, and taking the ‘safe but slow’ lines on some sections. Several times I would chase down a gap of several seconds on the long straight into the wind, but then be unable to drop the rider I caught as he sheltered behind me out of the wind. The only time I was gaining was on the long run uphill. By the last couple of laps, I was on my own and happy just to maintain my position. Some sections of the course were by now very treacherous but I managed not to make any major mistakes (making some minor ones is OK, at least that way I know I can’t push any harder in the corners without falling off!). I crossed the line 19th on a bike very heavy with mud, despite have changed bike twice.

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.