Central CX Round 6/Regional Championships, 28 Nov 2021

The last event in a shortened return season for Central CX (and I missed the first one) found me still enjoying CX and hoping this would continue. There was rain leading up to the event and lots of talk of sticky mud at the course, but on arrival it seemed fairly dry (although very cold) and the spare bike stayed in the car. A decent warmup spin and a course recce suggested that, unlike the last round, this was better suited to my (lack of) skills with only one potential ‘off the bike’ section and several places where you could get the power down. I just did one recce lap to avoid getting the tyres too muddy before the race (it was noticeable that they were starting to get pick up).

Anne Tur

My scoping out of the start turned out not to have worked - I was expecting a downhill tarmac start onto the start-finish straight but actually we had an uphill start and a long max sprint before finally turning onto the course. I lost some places having got a decent start due to running out of gears when the speed got really high on the road, but once the actual cyclocross started I got on with getting the watts down and making up places. This went generally well for most of the laps, steadily catching people and overtaking them (including a chap who, halfway through the race, reckoned using his elbows to try and stop me getting past was going to work for the rest of the race - it didn’t).

Anne Tur

Sadly once my tyres got slippery and I got tired, a few mistakes, three offs and three chain drops cost me some places. I also misjudged the ‘being lapped by the leader’ timing and crossed the line just ahead of him, so had to do an extra lap of shame, being the last on the course! This was made extra fun by the last of the crashes. I rolled over the line and later found I had come 20th - my second best result of the season - so I’m pretty pleased with that. But once again I have to think, if I had held it upright and kept my chain on I would have been 3-5 places ahead of where I ended up. Ah well!

Tim Phillips