Central CX Rd 2 MK Bowl, 19 Sep 2021

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This was my first CX race since 2017: after a washout TT season for health reasons I decided I would give CX a go again this year. The timing was also nice as I could watch Amelia (in the race before mine) and Maria (in the race after mine) as well! The lead up to the race wasn’t ideal - I went for a CX ride the day before, managed to have a silly crash and banged myself and the bike up (the rear mech is still not right!).

The day was forecast to be grey with rain later, but in fact the rain started on the drive over to MK Bowl and the grass was fairly damp when warming up, although the rain stopped again and the grass had dried again for the start of our race (also my first time in the V50 race). Lining up for the race I felt pretty nervous, hoping I could remember what to do, and particularly about the re-mounts which are not my strong point. In my favour was the fact that the lap only had one ‘off the bike’ point with a set of hurdles - other than that it was grass with lots of technical turns and a few climbs and descents.

I was gridded ¾ of the way from the front, and my start was fairly ok, making up some places in the early melee. After this I managed to settle into a decent rhythm, starting to pace myself a bit when noticed I was only 16 minutes into a 40 minute race! The hurdles went pretty well apart from one lap where I messed up the remount quite badly and almost crashed. The rain came back and the grass got noticeably damper and more slippery. I was on what I thought would be the last lap (already 40 mins in), and had a big gap behind me so I thought to myself ‘ok just relax and bring it home’ - literally on the next corner I slipped out, came off, had to put my chain back on and lost quite a few places, back behind people I’d already overtaken! Then I found we had an extra lap, so our race was well over 50 minutes in the end - at least I had time to re-take a few places. When the results came through I was 30th out of 59 starters, not bad at all but what a shame about those lost places!

Tim Phillips

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