English
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So the last cross race of the season (for me) would be the biggest yet… the National Champs held in Ipswich. A few weeks before the race I believed that if all went well with training, I would have as good a chance as any to stand on that top spot. However, the run up to the event didn’t go quite as smoothly as expected. Besides a few minor setbacks, before Christmas was reasonable and over the festive period I took a well needed recovery block to relax and rebuild ready for the next phase of training to follow.
The plan was to come back the week before the Champs and spend not that many hours on the bike but most sessions having some kind of speed work thrown it to wake up the legs but at the same time not draining them too much – approaching the race with lively fresh legs. However, as soon as I was due to start the training a family cold which I’d avoided catching for a few weeks caught up with me meaning that the first ride back was on the Thursday before the race. On the Thursday I went out for a longish road ride with a couple of the lads. However, I returned home in quite some pain as in the last 4 miles or so my knee packed in….Ice and feet up for the rest of the day. The following morning I attempted an easy MTB ride which lasted for 20 mins before I could start to feel the same thing happening again, so that ride ended there. All I could do was rest, ice and take anti-inflammation tablets in the hope that it would be ok come race day.
On the day of the race I never had any troubles with my knee whatsoever, but to be honest hoping for the win after only one decent ride in the last two weeks would have been a big ask….
Signing on at the event revealed that not one single rider who had any sort of chance at a good result at the Nationals was missing… not one! My race plan for the day was to simply commit early (more for my own head as opposed to psyching out other riders) and simply hold a hard effort for the duration of the race. Off the start commit and commit I did, going from second row of the grid through the field onto the front and pushing the pace, splitting up the field in the process! Unfortunately for me the pure lack of time on the bike showed and it wasn’t long before I went from 1st to well outside the top ten. I continued to push hard and run my own race managing to pick off a few riders before the finish line, ending up with a finishing position of 10th.
After the race I felt gutted and completely demoralised and it took me more than a few days to get my head back in a good place after it. Like I said maybe I was asking too much from myself after a poor approach but secretly I was kind of hoping for a top five at least.
Head screwed on properly and smashing it in training again and I’m pretty sure that come mid Feb when I head out to Cyprus for the first few races of the 2012 season then I will be – without any doubt in my mind – turning some heads!
