BMBS 3 (Margam)

After Corby’s prophesy of a course unaffected by the forecast of rain, I was looking forward to this one, I loved it last year and generally big hills suit me better than the flatter courses we have seen so far this season. Unfortunately, whereas Michael Fish got his prediction slightly wrong, Corby was wrong on a biblical scale! On the drive down I could hardly see the road markings, there was that much spray and heavy rain! The practice lap revealed just how hard it was going to be, just to finish the race. The start climb was a narrow off camber climb, followed by traversing the hill side on slick mud with a couple of techy wooded climbs to provide additional challenge. After this, a steep gully down to a spectator point which had been cut up so badly it was like riding through compost with a spattering of big loose rocks to keep you guessing – I think this was the cause of multiple trips to A&E later in the day. After a fire road climb and a bit more off camber wiggling (slipping) around, The next technical section was another shoot down through the rhododendrons with marshals at both ends. This was very slippery with a section of roots in the middle and about 6 guys sitting at the top watching people go down before they had a go. The rest of the course from here was not too badly affected, the water crossings’ still ride-able and the section in between was a cyclo-cross section, as it was last year. After a killer 1 mile climb, the last 2 km was down the hill back to the arena. This was the section I struggled the most on, it was narrow slippery singletrack which I kept falling off on by getting my weight in the wrong place and falling down the hill.

I was on the front row of this grid, which didn’t really make much difference because I am a slow starter and tend to pick people off later in the race once I have got into a rhythm. Unfortunately I never got into that rhythm, and seemed to spend the whole race in second gear. In the middle of the second lap I caught Si who was having trouble with his rear mech. I got away from him on the long climb but then, while trying to keep up with Oli Beckinsale I crashed a couple of times and was back behind him. On the final lap I completely lost him and he put a minute into me. I was glad to finish after falling off more times in this race than I have in the last couple of years in total! After looking at the results it is clear the course really split the men from the boys, unfortunately i looked more like Justin Beeber than Dizzy Rascal on this occasion!


I have a couple of weeks off now before the southern XC in 2 weeks, hopefully Corby will be able to keep his mouth shut and we will have some nice hot sunshine!