I've dabbled in cyclocross since I did my first races back in 2007, turning up to a handful of races each season, and not really doing much more to prepare for them than packing the car the night before. This year I'm putting all my eggs in the cyclocross basket. Cycling-wise this year has all been built up to this, and I came into this first race off the back of seven weeks of what counted, by my standards anyway, of structured training. August and September has involved a lot of early mornings spent running, doing road intervals, or technique drills in the local park (the latter has given me some kind of reputation with the local dog walkers I'm sure, who can't understand why the strange cyclist keeps jumping on and off his bike repeatedly).
So, I was as ready as I'd ever been for the start of a 'cross season, but I had no real idea how ready that was. The Welsh League seems to have spent the years since we moved to South Wales getting bigger and more competitive. Numbers seem to have stabilised at 120 riders or so, but that's a big change from the 60 or 70 who lined up when I started racing this league back in 2009. This expansion was accompanied for me by a steady slide backwards through the field - after a season of making the top 15 on a regular basis, I spent the next three seasons languishing in the lower reaches of the top 20. Having taken almost an entire season off, scoring only a DNF at the final round of 2013, I had no idea what was a realistic target - top 20? Or top 40? Or just top half of the field? I tried not to overanalyse it, whilst in reality doing just that, compounded by missing round 1 and scrutinising the results for names of people who used to finish near me in races.
Race day dawned, with the end of an ususually dry September forecast to give us one more gloriously sunny Sunday. The warm and dry conditions meant packing relatively light for a 'cross race - no need for a huge bag full of spare clothes, or the bucket, pressure washer and brushes. That will all change soon I'm sure. The venue was a pony club complete with 'trotting track' - an oval track, about 800m long and surfaced with gravel. The course spent about a third of the time in this wide open arena, either on the track or twisting through the infield, and the rest of the time snaking through the woodland which bordered it. A couple of practice laps revealed a pleasant surprise - no forced dismounts! There was one rooty drop and one awkward step up across a drainage ditch, but both were rideable in the dry grippy conditions as long as you had a bit of commitment.
The trotting track was used to full advantage to spread out the field, with a full lap of it at the beginning of the race before we headed into the first bottleneck in the woods. This also worked to my advantage - there was room on the wide track for riders to start about 25 abreast, so despite not being at round 1 (and therefore not being gridded), I still got a spot on the front row. Before I knew it the commisaire's words were over, ending with the usual "I will start you at some point in the next ten seconds" and then silence; wait poised for the whistle and 50 minutes of Pure Sweet Hell.
I'm no great sprinter off the line, but get me up to speed and I can go pretty hard for a kilometre or so, and so I managed to get into the first corner in the top 20, and ride a pretty smooth and traffic-free first lap. I played percentages and ran the tricky step across the drainage ditch, as insurance against someone in front of me making a mistake and causing me to stall. Claire called up that I was 22nd at the end of lap one. That seemed like an acceptable place to be, I thought, and carried on pressing, making sure I could defend that, maybe even sneak into the top 20.
I spent the next few laps to-ing and fro-ing with a couple of riders, but the second half of the race was largely me on my own, picking off the backmarkers and waiting for the bell. Somehow, after a completely dry September, the organisers has found a couple of muddy corners, one of which cut up to the point where it caught me out - my front wheel slid as I turned in, I overcorrected and my bars bounced off a tree on the inside of the turn. No harm done, but a reminder to keep things steady and remember how conditions can always change in a race.
I got lapped by the leader on my final lap. If I'm going to get lapped then let it be then, as it means two laps to go is suddenly magically transformed into your final lap. I allowed myself a glance backwards to make sure I was under no pressure in the last few hundred metres, but still tried to press hard all the way to the line. I crossed it in relief; relief that the pain in my muscles and lungs would ease, and relief that months of effort and preparation has translated into a better result than I had allowed myself to hope for. I thought I'd probably snuck into the top 20, so I was very pleased to see the results and find that I'd come 14th.
There's no room for complacency though. I'm sure not every Sunday will go as well as this one, and not every week will the course suit me this perfectly. Indeed, as I write this the long-range weather forecast suggests that the weather will resume normal service by next Sunday, and we could be in for a very different set of conditions.
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