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.