Southern XC 2

After a fairly successful return to riding and racing I decided to make this weekends Southern Champs at Wasing my first attempt at an Expert race. I couldn’t really justify staying in Sport after winning the last one, and Southern races are pretty short compared to national level events anyway. As I lined up, I noticed everyone in my category looked very fit. No baggys, camelbacks or ‘trail’ bikes in sight and less leg hair than an average room full of women (except me, of course). I was quite worried I was going to be fighting to avoid coming last, but I had my plan and I was going to stick to it!


The plan was simple; start gently and find a comfortable rhythm, then try and pick up the pace once my body was up and running. By the start of the first singletrack I was still on the back of the first bunch and a few people had already been dropped. As the race went on I dropped a couple of others and managed to catch the two riders in front. The course was very dry, twisty and rooty, which at some point in the first lap conspired against me. My front wheel dug into the soft soil then hit a root and twisted out of my hands and I hit the deck. Nothing too spectacular but enough to concede 20 or so seconds to the pair I had just reeled in. The second half of the lap from the big drop-off (which seemed a lot less scary than last year) through some new singletrack and the small bomb holes followed by a long section of fast, downhill singletrack to the finish was great and I seemed to make up a lot of time here. At the end of the first lap there was a group of 5 of us in a train along the tarmac section. I took a bit of a breather in the slipstream before taking to the front of the group into the first singletrack and used the short power climbs to drop all but one of the chasers. The rest of the race was pretty uneventful. I managed to drop the other chaser on the second half of the lap and stayed away from everyone behind me to the finish, even with my designated bottler not passing me a bottle and standing in the way when I tried to get it myself (thanks Ash!). On the penultimate lap I caught a Guernsey velo rider (who know Guernsey qualified for the Southern Champs! Next there will be people from the Falklands there too!) who stuck to my back wheel up until the drop off on the final lap but I again managed to ride a good second half of the lap and get a 13 second gap by the finish.


I ended up in 14th out of 25 starters which I am really happy with. My lap times were nice and consistent, all at 21 minutes and various seconds, and on crossing the finish I felt I could have carried on for another lap. My back was a bit sore at the end but not as bad as I expected since it was a very rooty and bumpy course. I think a lot of the pain was actually lower down where my pump and tyre levers were hitting my lower back continuously!


My next race will be the next southern at Crow Hill in 2 weeks so hopefully I can get some solid training in in the mean-time and make some solid improvements. One improvement which doesn’t require training will be fixing my bike so I can use the gears I want and not constantly have to change gear to find one the bike agrees with!