Rampage 4

After 2 weeks of holidays I made the last gasp decision to race the final round of the Rampage series at Checkendon on the way home from Stanstead. I arrived with enough time to sign on and build my bike (thanks to Ant White and Mt Zoom for the rapid delivery of some flash new jockey wheels, I would have been running the whole race without them!) and headed out for a quick recce. The course was identical to the previous round I did except in reverse. At practice speed it seemed to flow nicely and I felt pretty good.


I did my best to miss the start of the race and lined up on the back row of the [small] grid. From the start I struggled to make up many places and once into the woods I quickly lost sight of people in front. I seemed to take the wrong line into every corner forcing me to brake hard and waste power getting back up to speed. I didn’t feel like I found any sort of rhythm until the final lap, by which time I had been caught by quite a few Vets and, more upsettingly, by a couple of Sport riders too. I know I can put my performance, or lack of, down to being rusty on the bike, added to travelling back from Portugal the previous evening, but it is still frustrating to make the effort to get to a race, only to not really turn up. I finished second to Scott Chappel who I beat in a sprint finish only a month ago so I know I could have won this without the if’s and but’s.

I keep having to remind myself, winning was not the aim of this race, it was a hard training session to blow away the cobwebs of inactivity. It is only 2 weeks until the national championships in Richmond , which I have said, all along, would be my major target race of the season. I have a few more hard sessions this week before I start to taper for the big event. The last big session will be the Southern XC at Erlstoke on Sunday where I will also be trying out a warm-up routing. Apologies in advance if I look like an over-competitive prick on the turbo before the race!