BMBS 2 (Wasing)

Sunday was the second BMBS of the season and my first. When I arrived at the venue the first thing that stuck me was the massive set-up. Last years nationals felt pretty big but the new demo series has boosted the trade area so that it looks more like a world cup than a national race. The practice lap didn’t really reveal much except that the pressure guage on my track pump is a big fat liar and the 35psi was actually more like 70psi. There were a few subtle changes to the course including filling in or streams and cutting out the cyclo-cross climb section. The small amounts of rain recently may have actually helped the course too, a lot of the sections had firmed up and got faster.


On the start I was not feeling confident because of my performance here last time, not helped by my grid position on the penultimate row of the 60+ strong grid. I stuck to my plan from the start and stayed calm and didn’t try to out-sprint the whole pack and into the first bit of singletrack I was still well over half way back. The whole first lap was gridlock with bottlenecking every time the course got narrow. Si got away from me at this point and I only caught Adam when he was having issues with his new steed. By the end of the lap the field had spread out and it was possible to make a few passing moves, some were quited dodgy because there were very few real places for clean overtaking. I caught Si early in the second lap and passed him by going down the big drop while he went down the long cut but couldn’t shake him off my tail and he was still there until about half way around the third lap. Throughout the whole race I was constantly passing groups of riders at a time and I was surprised at how powerful I felt, it hurt but in a sadistically enjoyable way.

I crossed the line in 20th and am very happy at that result. There were some very strong riders in the race and I was only 5 minutes back from the winner which is a vast improvement on previous results and hopefully I can work on getting better starts and be even closer to the pointy end in the coming races. My lap times also put me about half way up the expert field which is confirmation to me that I can compete at that level if I get the chance next year. The most important thing about this result is I got one over on Si after him having the edge in the last couple of races! It is good to have some good close competition within the team to really spur us all on.