What better way to end the summer than deciding, on Thursday night, to race on Sunday not once but twice.
We're away in the Midlands this week for a couple of weddings and some downtime. Of course the first thing that springs to mind after 'downtime' these days is 'is there a race I can go and do'. With the long range forecast looking good, I found myself hunting on the internet for holiday races. Lo and behold, the final round of the Midlands XC series was on not too far from Birmingham; the series is run by my old friend James, and so it would be downright rude not to show up, for a pre-cyclocross season leg-stretcher at the end of a three week training block, or so I reasoned. Andy, another Midlands buddy, helps James out at a few races so I dropped him a message to see if he was going to be there. He wasn't, because he was helping organise the last round of a summer evening XC series run by his club, Royal Leamington Spa CC. One race at 14.30, one at 18.30, only an hour's (fast) drive away from each other....and so a plan was formed.
Having passed up copious free booze at a wedding on Saturday and managed to get a not-too-late night, I packed the car, buoyed up by perfect weather for racing, and set off mid-morning for Dudmaston, near Bridgenorth. I arrived in plenty of time to catch up with James and warm up with a couple of laps of the fast, dry, 6km-long course, which featured lots of fast singletrack, a couple of steep loose descents and some small drop-offs that even I could get air off. I lined up for the sport race in a very competitive-looking field of about 30 and got ready for a sharp reminder of the chaos and all-out effort that comes at the start of an XC race. Sure enough I nearly crashed 100 metres after the start line, when I hit a rut unsighted behind another rider. I held onto that, and tried to embrace the pain in my lungs and legs whilst fighting for position in the middle of the pack for the first half a lap. Things gradually settled down, for me as a result of getting dropped out the back of a group of four other riders I had been sticking with. With hindsight I could have made more effort to stay with them, but it was going to be a long day, with another race to come, so I tried to just enjoy myself but keep pushing. And I did enjoy myself, vowing to make the effort to do some more XC racing next year as I pushed on round the course, trying to find the fastest lines and keep my legs working hard. At the start of the fourth and final lap I had sight of a rider ahead of me, and spent twenty minutes trying to reel him in. I only managed to closed the gap to him in the final few hundred metres of the race, and he outsprinted me at the end, but it had been something to make me motivated for one more lap.
With all of five minutes of warm down and a race against time to make it to race number two, I packed the car and sped off towards Warwick, for a brisk drive that at no point involved me doing 100mph down the M42 whilst eating pizza off the passenger seat. That would be a terribly reckless way to act just to get to a bike race on time. I made it with about 45 minute to the start. It was (mercifully) a shorter race on a shorter course, and I had time for a couple of warm up laps again, trying to copy Andy's lines through the wooded sections and hoping my legs would feel better in the race itself. The race was a very small affair with only about 30 riders taking the start across all categories, and as a result I bagged myself a spot on the front row. At the start, something I experienced something I can't recall happening to me before: I got the drop on everyone and led the field into the first corner, and through the first section of singletrack. I was relieved of this unfamiliar position before too long, as a rider shot past me up the only major climb on the course, with Andy in hot pursuit. I lost two more places on the first lap, not helped by a couple of silly mistakes - a bit of tiredness creeping in? For the rest of the race I swapped places with another rider repeatedly for 4th and 5th place; he had the edge on me in the technical sections, whereas I made time back to him on the climb. On the last lap he got away from me as far as he had all race, and like race number one I tried to close the gap, wringing out every ounce of strength this time. Once again I closed the gap only within sight of the finish, but this time I managed to win the sprint and come home in 4th place.
It was good to fit some more racing in at the end of a hard block of training. What's more I got to sharpen up my skills on the dirt after lots of racing on tarmac, and remind myself that XC racing is fun and I should do it more! Now it's time for a week of recovery, then three more weeks of training leading me straight into the cyclocross season.
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