English
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Despite racing a round of the Southern Series at the start of the month, it feels like it’s been ages since a big cross country race, with my last big race being the Olympic Test Event back at the end of July. Ok… so I’ve been racing since then, but with most of the races being other disciplines of cycling it’s difficult to judge as to how the legs are going to fire for the final round of the British Mountain Bike Series this weekend (24th Sept).
For the week leading up to the race my legs felt as though they were taking longer to recover than normal and I spent most of the week just waiting for my legs to feel good again. The Friday (day before the race) I went for two practice laps of what I feel was one of the best courses of the season and my legs felt a little poor to say the least. I found myself breathing quite hard even in the granny ring and at one point I thought two things… 1) either that I’m going to have a half decent race, as there’s been hundreds of occasions that I’ve felt poor the day before a good performance… or… 2) I’ve overdone it, haven’t recovered properly and I really am in that bad shape! Obviously I was staying optimistic and thinking my first thought was the case but honestly the day of the race I wasn’t sure…
That evening I raced as part of a composite team in the four man team relay which consisted of two turns on a 2 minute short track, where I did feel a lot better but still I wasn’t that confident for the following day’s race. The next morning after a good night of sleep we headed from our hotel to the event venue, Newnham Park, Plymouth. On the warm up before the race, again my body was telling me “you’re crap Lee…go home!” but nevertheless the race was there to smash so I set my head exactly for that…
Off the start I made a point of getting to the front before the first singletrack section 300m from the start line so I could hold up anyone who may have better legs, but I seemed to be the one pushing the pace. As the course exited the single track I was surprised to find that nobody was passing me and the field already seemed to be stringing out behind after only 5 minute of racing. Entering the first decent I noticed Liam Kileen (current British Champ) tight on my wheel but I wasn’t in any rush to let him pass as I wanted to control the race the best I could to my advantage and so I continued to lead the way. By half way into the lap and onto the main climb of the lap I started to push the pace and by the top of the climb it was just the two of us. Starting lap 2 of the 5 lap race (still leading the race) we continued to increase our lead and press on with the pace. On the bottom of the main climb Liam was starting to put a slight gap between us and at the end of the 2 lap he had a 15 second lead crossing the line for the start of the 3rd. I realised at this point that I’d have to ride my own race for a lap or I would burn out, but despite easing off the pace ever so slightly I didn’t lose much more time and by the end of the 3rd lap I was still only just over 30 seconds adrift. Crossing the line for the start of the 4th lap I was feeling pretty good and the plan was to pull back at least half of the time back before entering the last lap, however, I put the hammer down for probably no longer than 4-5mins and the cramps were starting to make themselves known. At that point I knew that I was no longer racing, just trying to survive to the finish and hope at the same time I didn’t get caught by the chasers. Over the space of the last two laps I went from just over 30 seconds behind the leader to over 2 ½ minutes crossing the line. Despite the cramp I still managed to cross the line 2nd almost 2 minutes clear of 3rd.
On the grand scheme of things, I took the race on and made the most of it but I would have loved to have finished a little closer to Liam than I eventually did. In saying that… that was the best I could do on the day and if I knew I was going to get the result I did the day before I’d have taken it!
The next race (last mtb race of the season) will be the Hondsrug Classic in Holland, which will be a UCI class 1 event, so it may be another opportunity to pick up some well needed UCI points for the best placing at next year’s World Cups.
