Midlands 4 (sherwood)

This Sunday was the final round of the 2010 Midlands series at Sherwood pines. I knew coming into the race I had a reasonable shot at 3rd in the series so I was looking forward to a good battle. Unfortunately it didn’t all go to plan. I might as well get my excuses out of the way now!

Excuse #1
Fiddling with my suspension set up on Thursday night and then forgetting to put it back before the race left me with pro-pedal on low and a relatively fast damping. This meant I had noticeable pedal bob on the fireroads and the bike felt a bit wollowey and bouncy on some of the pump sections of singletrack.


Excuse #2
Flying off the start line and leading for the first quarter of a lap has never been my strong suit, so why I decided to do it in this race after 4 weeks of zero training, I will never know!


Excuse #3
Flat courses have never been my favourite, and after blowing up on the first lap, the worst thing for me was to have to pedal hard for the next hour and a half. I did make up ground on the ‘downhill’ section but lost it again as soon as terrain levelled out.


Excuse #4
I have not ridden in anger for over a month. The last time I raced was my 24 hour solo and since then I have not got a sweat on or done a single interval. I felt completely empty on anything remotely pointing upwards and was really struggling to hold on to the back of 9th place for much of the race.

(Photo curtosy of Franck Lebon of Inverse Racing so I blame him for the timing!)

The course was very typical of Sherwood with plenty of very tight pedally singletrack and linking fireroad with the added bonus of part of the ‘downhill’ track. It would probably have been one of the best courses I have done at the venue had I been on form. I started off positively but quickly dropped back until I was just hanging on to the back of 9th by a very taught piece of elastic. Once I settled into the race I hitched a lift with James Dymond, Dan Blackwell and Alex Chopin and we quickly caught Paul Brenan. I made an ill fated effort to escape on the 3rd lap and stayed clear until early in the 4th when my lack of pace on the fire roads got me caught. From then on, every time I looked back I could see a train of 5 or 6 riders sitting on my tail and I knew I would struggle to keep them at bay come the finish. In the last few sections I lost 4 places and but managed to out-sprint a couple of the guys into the woods to climb back to 8th. I literally had nothing left after this race and pretty much collapsed over the finish line in a panting, wheezing heap. I honestly thought I had thrown away my chance of the series podium so I was amazed when they called me up. Really happy with the result and the trophy definately makes ripping my own legs off during the race worthwhile!


I want to say thanks to James and Nadine for putting on a great series once again, and thanks to all the clubs who have helped set up the courses this year. I hope someone can step into the breach and take over the series for next year and keep up progress that has been made over the past 3 years.