Lee Williams Blog: British Inter Area Team Champs

British Inter Area Team Champs.

This week saw me heading to Leicestershire for the British Inter Area Team Champs, where unlike every other race where you race for yourself, this weeks overall position would be determined on your teams top 4 finishers and the team with the most points scored would be the winners. After waking up to the driving wind and rain the morning of the race, I was expecting the course to be really muddy but arriving at the race venue it had stopped raining and the wind seemed to be drying the course out since the earlier races from the morning. The course was fast rolling with swooping corners in and out of undulating park lands with the odd few tight slippery off camber corners to catch you out.

Our team (Wales) were gridded 7th which allowed us to take up the last spot on the front row, which was lucky, if we didn’t make the front row, it would have meant us being at least six rows back as the whole team were gridded and would line up in single file behind they first man. Off the start my plan was to go quite quick as there were a few of the best cross riders in the country including the current National Trophy leader and I didn’t want to give them an easy time.

Inter Area

I managed to set the pace off the start and by the end of the first lap our top 4 points scorers were in a great position for a top spot (2nd, 4th, 10th, 20th). After the first lap the leader (Paul Oldham) started to put the pressure on and I tried hard to stay on his wheel but he slowly pulled a gap for the rest of the race.

The rest of the race I was in a battle for 2nd with Rob Jebb and Dave Collins who are both top 5 Trophy riders which was good company. After the half way mark, Jebb stared to make a break and got a 20sec gap, leaving me and Collins to try and chase back, however, I was already flat out, so all I could do was hang on. With a few laps to go Collins pulled away nearly catching 2nd leaving me to end up with a finishing position of 4th just over a minute down on the leader and ending in a team result of 4th.

Overall I was quite happy with the race, as I still feel as if I got a lot more space to improve this cross season, as my results are getting better and better every race. Next race for me is round 5 of the Welsh Series this weekend in Cardiff, which is always a tough course.