Showing posts with label thetford mountain bike racing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thetford mountain bike racing. Show all posts
Sunday, 22 February 2015
Thetford Winter Series 2014/2015 - Round 4
Round 4 : Brandon Country Park : 22nd February
With a 13th at round 1 and 21st at both rounds 2 and 3 I was sitting in 7th overall in the series standings.
In the weeks leading up to the race I'd found my pace has improved quite a bit and my single-track handling was back to something like normal, so I was hopeful of being further into the top 20 this time.
The morning was cold but bright and the forecast said it should warm up as the morning went on, rain wasn't due until an hour or so after the race. I decided to trust the weather man and opted for non-winter gear, baring my legs and leaving the winter boots in the car!
Although I was gridded I wasn't comfortable with my position in the pen and got off to an apprehensive start, feeling I could put more power down but not finding it easy to jostle among the other riders. After the first couple of fire-road bends there was a long straight where I managed to push onwards and was able to retake a few places before the first section of single-track.
The course was excellent, with lots of single-track and with a surprising amount of climbing. TMTBR had been a bit evil with the end of the loop which took us up the bottom of the Plumb-buster then across and up the Nutcracker (very narrow and steep)!
I can't have lost too many places as I didn't find much in the way of hold-ups along the course but the poor start niggled at me for the rest of the race. Lap 3 was eerily quiet and forcing myself to push on was hard without other riders around to pace myself with. I played a game of imaging Ady and Wingar were just around the corner ahead and I was trying to close them down... At the start of lap 4 Karen told me that Cavey wasn't too far ahead which spurred me on for the final lap (even though he's in a different cat). Around half-way through the lap I caught a few glimpses of him in the distance and finally, at the bottom of the Plumb-buster I managed to catch and pass him, but found a slow queue heading up the Nutcracker. At the top I chased after a couple of others from the queue (not knowing if they were in my cat or not) along a draggy straight to the finish line but wasn't able to catch them.
Once again I'd targeted a top 20 finish, and as I'd gone into this round feeling stronger than last time I'd hoped on a reasonable improvement on the 21st place I'd finished in the last 2 times.
I turns out the 2 blokes I was chasing at the end were in my cat after all, and I finished 19th (7s off 17th!). The full series rankings haven't been published but after fiddling with a spreadsheet I think I've worked out that I finished 11th in the series overall.
I had hoped all the training would have got me a few places nearer the top 10 but it can't be helped. I suspect a weak start and not having anyone to chase in lap 3 cost me a few places. This is my last year as a Senior and I'll be a vet next time round, if I'd been in that cat yesterday I'd have finished 11th...
Roll on next season...
Sunday, 25 January 2015
Thetford Winter Series 2014/2015 - Round 3
Round 3 : Mayday Meadow : 25th January
An xmas of being ill and lazy had taken its toll... I'd put quite a lot of effort into training through January but it was largely undoing the damage from December's lurgy and Xmas's lethargy... By the middle of the week before the race I was feeling pretty quick again, but knew I wasn't quite where I had been in Nov/Dec.
The ground was frozen solid when I arrived but the forecast was for it to warm up as the morning went on. I was well wrapped up for the pre-ride, but I decided to leave the buff and jacket in the car and change my longs for shorts and my winter boots for normal SPDs for the race.
I was gridded again and got off to a reasonable start, someone fell in front of me on the first corner but I managed to avoid him without hitting anyone else. The course had a lot of fire-road (normally a weakness of mine) but the hours of looping around Alton Water appeared to have paid off as I was able to keep my place along it. There was a small queue at the first single-track section but mostly lap 1 flowed well. At the end of lap 1 another rider fell in front of me, he clipped the bike in front and went down, fortunately I was able to avoid him (checking he was OK) and carry on.
Lap 2 flowed better and I was still feeling pretty strong, but by lap 3 my legs were starting to fade a little. This wasn't helped by drive-train issues! While prepping the bike on Saturday I'd spotted a jockey wheel that was close to wearing away completely and had swapped it for a spare, but on my last few rides and even on the morning's pre-ride there had been no other problems. However... Once or twice during the early laps, if I tried to put the power down in a smaller cassette ring the chain would jump; as the race went on this got more and more frequent :-(
By
lap 4 my body was whimpering, but I'd worked out that even if I backed
off a little I should still be able to make it round for a 5th lap and
have recovered a little for a final push.
As the ground warmed up, the course changed considerably! Bits that had been slippery to begin with had formed a dry line by the end, but the previously frozen sections became slippery and very wet.
Lap 5 felt good, but the lap times show I was actually a minute slower than lap 4... How does that work?!?!
I was aiming for a top 20 slot but ended up 21st of 87, 2hr Male Senior (missing out on 20th by 2s to someone who'd wheel-sucked me with a team mate for for most of lap 5 - mutter mutter), so not too far off.
After the first 2 rounds I was sitting in 10th place overall, so it'll be interesting to see how much damage this has done ahead of Rnd4.
I definitely noticed my singletrack handling wasn't as good as it usually is, I find AW is great for speed training, but I definitely need to spend more time in the forest getting my single-track handling back up to scratch!
An xmas of being ill and lazy had taken its toll... I'd put quite a lot of effort into training through January but it was largely undoing the damage from December's lurgy and Xmas's lethargy... By the middle of the week before the race I was feeling pretty quick again, but knew I wasn't quite where I had been in Nov/Dec.
The ground was frozen solid when I arrived but the forecast was for it to warm up as the morning went on. I was well wrapped up for the pre-ride, but I decided to leave the buff and jacket in the car and change my longs for shorts and my winter boots for normal SPDs for the race.
I was gridded again and got off to a reasonable start, someone fell in front of me on the first corner but I managed to avoid him without hitting anyone else. The course had a lot of fire-road (normally a weakness of mine) but the hours of looping around Alton Water appeared to have paid off as I was able to keep my place along it. There was a small queue at the first single-track section but mostly lap 1 flowed well. At the end of lap 1 another rider fell in front of me, he clipped the bike in front and went down, fortunately I was able to avoid him (checking he was OK) and carry on.
Lap 2 flowed better and I was still feeling pretty strong, but by lap 3 my legs were starting to fade a little. This wasn't helped by drive-train issues! While prepping the bike on Saturday I'd spotted a jockey wheel that was close to wearing away completely and had swapped it for a spare, but on my last few rides and even on the morning's pre-ride there had been no other problems. However... Once or twice during the early laps, if I tried to put the power down in a smaller cassette ring the chain would jump; as the race went on this got more and more frequent :-(
 |
| A jockey wheel that's seen better days |
As the ground warmed up, the course changed considerably! Bits that had been slippery to begin with had formed a dry line by the end, but the previously frozen sections became slippery and very wet.
Lap 5 felt good, but the lap times show I was actually a minute slower than lap 4... How does that work?!?!
I was aiming for a top 20 slot but ended up 21st of 87, 2hr Male Senior (missing out on 20th by 2s to someone who'd wheel-sucked me with a team mate for for most of lap 5 - mutter mutter), so not too far off.
After the first 2 rounds I was sitting in 10th place overall, so it'll be interesting to see how much damage this has done ahead of Rnd4.
I definitely noticed my singletrack handling wasn't as good as it usually is, I find AW is great for speed training, but I definitely need to spend more time in the forest getting my single-track handling back up to scratch!
 |
| Photo by Kevin Shaw |
Sunday, 7 December 2014
Thetford Winter Series 2014/2015 - Round 2
Round 2 : Brandon FR6 : 7th December
After a few days of being knocked out by a lurgy from hell I was feeling well enough to race, but still had sinuses full of gunge... It had rained lightly off and on all the way to Brandon but was forecast to be nothing worse than a few spots during the race.
The pre-ride made it clear that my body was lacking power; I was reasonably quick on the flat, but had no oomph up the climbs. Chatted to Ady before the race and he suggested riding to heart rate rather than speed, so decided to give that a try.
I was gridded, but was soon passed by plenty of riders as I struggled to keep the pace up and found a queue at the first section of single-track. Around 2/3rds of the way around lap one a 15min sleety downpour soaked me through and froze me to the bone. The ground churned up and I plodded on for 4 laps, occasionally finding bursts of power but mostly just trying to keep a HR of approx 160-165.
I ended up 21st of 86. I'd usually be very pleased with that when well, so to be comfortably within the top 30 (gridding place) when poorly was great.
After a few days of being knocked out by a lurgy from hell I was feeling well enough to race, but still had sinuses full of gunge... It had rained lightly off and on all the way to Brandon but was forecast to be nothing worse than a few spots during the race.
The pre-ride made it clear that my body was lacking power; I was reasonably quick on the flat, but had no oomph up the climbs. Chatted to Ady before the race and he suggested riding to heart rate rather than speed, so decided to give that a try.
I was gridded, but was soon passed by plenty of riders as I struggled to keep the pace up and found a queue at the first section of single-track. Around 2/3rds of the way around lap one a 15min sleety downpour soaked me through and froze me to the bone. The ground churned up and I plodded on for 4 laps, occasionally finding bursts of power but mostly just trying to keep a HR of approx 160-165.
I ended up 21st of 86. I'd usually be very pleased with that when well, so to be comfortably within the top 30 (gridding place) when poorly was great.
Sunday, 5 October 2014
Thetford Dusk Til Dawn 2014
Once again me and Cavey paired up.
It had rained, hard, from mid-day till about an hour before the start.
I volunteered for the 1st lap.
I got a good start however a course taping cock-up meant us leaders were sent the wrong way so I spent much time fighting through the pack to make back some places.
Half way around the course I cheekily overtook some other riders where there wasn't really enough room, I cut back in and had to keep the speed up so as not to hold them up. This led me to take a tight left/right too quickly and I glanced a tree. My shorts snagged on a little branch and ripped down the side, all the way from the top to the bottom! A cry from behind of "Oh, fucking hell!" confirmed I would have to do the rest of the lap with my arse and tackle flapping about in the autumn air! Fortunately I'd managed to stay on the bike and even more fortunately I had spare shorts in the car!
The taping cockup hadn't cost us too badly and we were in 5th place at the end of lap 1!
The rest of the night was incident free. The temperature dropped to around freezing and as usual the sunrise in the forest was stunning. I passed through one forest opening which was strewn with frozen cobwebs with shafts of sunlight glistening through.
As the night went on we moved up into 4th place and managed to hold onto that all the way to the end. With 2 laps to go there was some timing confusion that meant we might be able to nudge up into 3rd and onto the podium, but in reality that wasn't ever going to happen. We ended up 4th, with Cavey managing to get back over the line with only a couple of minutes to spare!
We've paired up for D2D 3 times now and this is the best result we've had and I'm exceedingly chuffed with it.
It had rained, hard, from mid-day till about an hour before the start.
I volunteered for the 1st lap.
I got a good start however a course taping cock-up meant us leaders were sent the wrong way so I spent much time fighting through the pack to make back some places.
Half way around the course I cheekily overtook some other riders where there wasn't really enough room, I cut back in and had to keep the speed up so as not to hold them up. This led me to take a tight left/right too quickly and I glanced a tree. My shorts snagged on a little branch and ripped down the side, all the way from the top to the bottom! A cry from behind of "Oh, fucking hell!" confirmed I would have to do the rest of the lap with my arse and tackle flapping about in the autumn air! Fortunately I'd managed to stay on the bike and even more fortunately I had spare shorts in the car!
The taping cockup hadn't cost us too badly and we were in 5th place at the end of lap 1!
The rest of the night was incident free. The temperature dropped to around freezing and as usual the sunrise in the forest was stunning. I passed through one forest opening which was strewn with frozen cobwebs with shafts of sunlight glistening through.
As the night went on we moved up into 4th place and managed to hold onto that all the way to the end. With 2 laps to go there was some timing confusion that meant we might be able to nudge up into 3rd and onto the podium, but in reality that wasn't ever going to happen. We ended up 4th, with Cavey managing to get back over the line with only a couple of minutes to spare!
We've paired up for D2D 3 times now and this is the best result we've had and I'm exceedingly chuffed with it.
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