English
So here it is….the biggest cross country mountain bike race on the UK calendar….well one of the biggest races on the UK calendar of any discipline for that matter. UCI XCO Mountain Bike World Cup Round 1, Dalby Forest Yorkshire. For the last 6 weeks I’ve been preparing for this event, training hard, eating healthy and making all the necessary tweaks to make sure that come race day on the 25th of April my legs would be ready to smash out the gears and get my first breakthrough World Cup ride.
In the last couple of weeks before the event I was introducing some great leg killing/sharpening sessions where I was most noticing the hard work paying off and form was getting good. I was slowly getting leaner, faster and fitter than what I was in Sherwood, however, on Monday the 19th April just 6 days before race day I ended what would be my last hard session before the tapper down with a sore achilles heal leaving me wake up on the Tuesday morning unable to walk….Nightmare!! From that point on I new all I could do was put my feet up, rest, and just hope that it would get better before the race. For any athlete this is one of the worst situations to be in.
When you catch the flu and you feel really ill, all you want to do is go to bed and sleep, but when your mentally ready for training and physically fit (minus the injury) its one of the times where you want to be cracking on with the good work, but its just out of your control annoying to say the least.
Tuesday off, Wednesday off, Thursday off but headed for Dalby none the less. By Friday my heal was still feeling stiff but compared to how it was on the Tuesday earlier on in the week it was a huge improvement and I felt that I needed the ride to get some blood flow to the muscles and joints, in the hope this would be the catalyst to full recovery. On the Friday I done 1hr real easy riding as all I was trying to do was just turn over to get some movement in the legs and nothing else, then if all was OK on the Saturday then I would do a few small efforts to see if it would hold up under ab it of pressure. On Saturday I felt alot better about the race to come as on yesterday easy ride I could feel the twinges even when riding with no pressure on the pedals, but on Saturday my ankle was holding up even under the small efforts. My thoughts earlier on in the week was that if I cant train then I have to be positive that come race day I’d have the freshest legs on the start line, and after this ride, despite feeling very stiff legged, I was thinking that I may be able to pull off the decent ride I was expecting after all….
Race Day.
I knew that a good warm up would be key due to the lack of riding through the week, so after a 40 minute battle of trying to loosen up my legs I headed to the start line placed 95 on the grid and was as ready as I could be (given the circumstances) for the race ahead. By the time the elite men’s race was in the last couple of minutes before the start the crowds had got huge with thousands trying to squash their way in to watch the spectacle and it was that moment when I realised actually how many spectators had actually come to watch. Off the start I manged to hold my own and picking off a few places going into the first few turns before the singletrack when we hit bottleneck. Once everything had singled out there were only a few places on the course where there was room to pass and start to move up, but unfortunately as is always the case with world cup racing every rider is thinking the same thing and it just ends up being a sprint to hold the position your already in.
Not long after the start I realised this wasn’t going to be an easy day at the office, my legs were stiff and powerless and my back was absolutely screaming at me. The only positive was that the one thing I thought would give me grief in the race (my ankle) was fine and the amount of that huge crowd that were cheering me on….awesome! By the end of the first lap I was around the 80 mark and really starting to suffer.
I was finding myself passing 2 or 3 riders, but my legs were just tightening up and loosing all the positions I’d made up and more. Despite clearly having a bad day and thinking it couldn’t get much worse I punctured on the 3rd of the 6lap race, miles from the tech area.
I didn’t want to run over the uneven ground and risk my ankle again so I was forced to retire. Needless to say I’m not the happiest of bunny’s at the moment, but I suppose you just got to suck it up get over it and set out the plan of attack for my next target race. This weekend will see me racing the Wiggle Enduro 6 and night time trial, which should be a good fun weekend’s racing. If your going….see you there!
Results
www.xcracer.com/Dalby-World-Cup-XC-Results.html
Video Footage
www.xcracer.com/Dalby-2010-World-Cup-XC-Elite-Mens-Race.html
There will also be replay’s of the event on Eurosport on Thursday 5pm and Friday 8pm.
