English
Location: Richmond, North Yorkshire
17/07/11
This weekend I made the long trek up north for the National MTB XC Championships with the hope of getting a top 15 position. I know that off-road riding isn’t usually my type of riding but this is how I started in the sport when I was a youth rider ripping around on my GT Arrowhead mountain bike. This year I started off my mountain biking with the Wiggle Enduro 6 with Lee Williams where we got 3rd place in the Elite Pairs category and then moved on to the BMBS at Wasing park where I got 24th place in the Elite category. This then gave me the idea of racing the nationals this weekend and setting a goal of a top 15 position a realistic target.
I arrived on the Saturday afternoon to do a few practice laps of the course and to my surprise the course was really quite tough. It consisted of steep grass climbs with slippery rocky and rooty descents and soft rooty singletrack in the woods. After riding the course the first time round I realised that my technical skills were a bit rusty but by the end of the second lap I was more confident with my abilities. Now it was time to clean the bike off and fuel up my body for the following day…Race Day!
After a good night’s sleep, even with the heavy rain all night, I was feeling fresh and ready to race. My race wasn’t until 2.30pm which gave the course chance to dry out although the previous races had started to leave big ruts on the course. I got called up to the start line and was gridded pretty much at the back which put me at a disadvantage straight away due to the traffic building up in the singletrack sections.
The race started super fast as usual with every one fighting for a better position so that they didn’t get caught up on the single track descent at the top of the climb. I was gradually picking off rider one at a time keeping a nice tempo and taking my time on the descents as I wanted to finish the race and taking risks is not the best way to finish a race. I carried on at my own pace and soon found myself riding with two other riders in around 16th place and we were taking it in turns to lead round the course especially in the long fire road climb with a strong head wind.
On my fourth lap I crashed on a muddy shoot which gave the other two riders a chance to get a gap on my. When I crashed my bike made a rather unhealthy noise and when riding around trying to catch the other two riders up was making an odd noise. This made me a bit wearing on the last lap and a half as the last thing I wanted to do is crash hard due to a carbon component failing on me. I cautiously rode to the finish line and finished in 19th position which I was fairly pleased with. I think that if I had a better gridding and a bit more practice on my technical skills then I could quite possibly be racing high up the field with some of the race favorites.
I would like to say massive congratulations to Team mate Lee Williams on his 3rd place/Bronze Medal position in the race as it was very much deserved with the amount of hard work and training he put in to the event! I would also say a big thanks to Ben Jeffery for all his support as team Wiggle Mechanic and professional bottle passer who with out him would make racing a lot more stressful.
Ben
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