Midlands XC 1

I have been looking forward to this race since I saw Hanchurch was back on the calendar. It has been my favourite race for the last couple of years, it seems to have everything you could possibly want; short technical climbs, one long painful climb, flowing singletrack and plenty of passing opportunities. It also helped that the trails were dusty and the roots were dry and grippy!


I have also been looking forward to this race because it was a chance for the whole team to meet for the first time. I am really happy with how the team is shaping up; all the riders seem really nice and Jason has half the world lined up to sponsor us! After having a look over his pronghorn I am even more excited about getting mine! Not long now! Most of the team were also showing off their new Gaerne shoes which are whiter than I thought possible! Good job it was dry! Again, cant wait to get mine! Atleast I did get to pull on some of the new team kit which definitely made the whole thing feel more real.


The race started with a long fireroad section up the hill to join the course before a tight left turn onto arutted landrover track climb. I had decided to take the start fairly steadily after fading rapidly last time out added to the fact that I didn’t fancy my chances of having any legs left if I tried to sprint the whole 1 mile climb to the top of the course. Following this the course turned onto a weaving section of singletrack where it was important to try and flow to keep up speed, tricky when there are 40-odd riders trying to overtake each other! The first lap was intense to say the least. I had someone breathing down my neck for virtually the whole lap but I kept pushing with the assumption that he wasn’t trying to overtake so was probably hurting as much as me. Going through the feed zone the cheers and shouts from the WAGS of the team gave me a bit of extra energy and I managed to drop him on the start of the second lap and caught a few of the guys in front including team mate Si by the top of the long climb.


For the rest of the race I was constantly jostling for position with a group of about 4 riders and while catching the backmarkers from the Masters category. On the last lap I started to feel a touch of cramp in the back of my right quad and subsequently lost touch with the group I was with. I finished in 18th out of 44 finishers, only 1 minute behind Si in 13th, which I am fairly happy with. My performance was definitely much improved from last week and despite hurting a lot more I enjoyed the race too. I definitely felt sick at the end of the race which, bizarrely, I really enjoyed as it means I managed to push myself more than normal!


Thanks to the midlands XC team for putting on such a high quality course and also thanks for the non-riding part of the team for bottling for me. I am now looking forward to 3 weeks of hard training building up to the next ranking race, the BMBS at Wasing (fingers crossed I enjoy it more than last time!) The week before this I am riding in the Dyfi Enduro, as I said in my ‘about me’ section on the team website, this is my favourite race of the year and although not too serious, I am hoping for a strong performance and a big improvement on last years 34th!