As one of the team, Holly, had decided to give CX a try at this race, I combined it with a trip to see my parents pre-Christmas and entered the race as an end of season fun race. It also gave a nice opportunity to see how races were run in another part of the country. It was organised quite differently - overall smaller fields meant a single combined junior/senior/V40/V50 men and women’s race after the youth races - also a one hour race so much longer than the 40 minutes I’m used to!

After watching Holly do her race, there was time for a quick course recce and warmup before the race. I had scoped out parts of the course while spectating, and it was clear that after a fast flat tarmac start, the pinch point would be a series of off camber zig zags at the end of the start-finish straight. Corner 1 of the recce and I crash - great start! After that the rest of the course seemed ok, with some wooded sections, an off camber/off the bike climb, some hurdles, a small spiral - the usual sorts of things. After a single lap recce to keep my bike fairly clean, I lined up for the start being quite nervous about how the first corner would go - hopefully better than the recce!

The start was staggered with juniors/seniors going first, then V40s, then us, and the women (of which there weren’t many at all sadly, in contrast with Central CX). I was at the back of my group, but the start went well and I managed to get about halfway up into the group - and then came the pinch point. Luckily much better than the recce, managed to stay out of trouble (despite someone coming down just ahead of me) and cleared the section with relief. After that it was just a question of settling in, pacing myself for a long race and trying to pick people off as and when I could. There was a lot of traffic with the slower riders from the seniors and V40s as well as my own race, but this meant there was almost always a target just up ahead to aim for, and I could just keep chasing. It was probably my most successful race in the sense that I didn’t come off the bike at all, and got most of my remounts fairly well. One almost mishap on the last lap when my back wheel hit the hurdle as I was getting over it, bouncing me into the tape, but I managed to stay upright and get to the finish. The extra 20 minutes didn’t seem too bad either, and I finished in 9th place in V50 - my highest placing but in a smaller field. All in all a great fun day out, and nice to have my bike and me covered in red Devon mud!

Tim Phillips

Torbay Velopark Jinglecross CX, 19 Dec 2021

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