Central League CX Rds 4 & 5, 2 & 9 Oct 2022

Round 4 of the Central region CX series was the first one I was able to make after the TT season was over, and unfortunately it isn’t my favourite course of the year, with a very technical single track MTB section which I found very tricky last year! This time my aim was to try and ride it better, which I managed to a certain extent. I was very nervous on the start line (last year I almost decided not to ride) and when the whistle went, even though I made a good start, I wasn’t motivated to stay ahead of people that I would be holding up later in the lap when we reached the technical section. I probably lost more places than I intended to though, and tried to settle into the race, finding a few people who I was able to catch up with on the ‘power’ part of the course, only to lose them again on the technical part. I did feel like I was riding it better than last year, but annoyingly managed to make the same mistake I did then - crashing on an easy corner more due to lack of attention than anything else. After some time lost on putting my chain back on and a very sore knee, I almost called it a day at the end of that lap, but with one lap to go decided to keep going. I rolled in for a very disappointing 38th place - about what my performance deserved (for reasons I can’t really explain I did much better last year placing 25th!).

Round 5 was a new course for me - at Whipsnade Zoo (cue lots of jokes about racing through the lion enclosure). In fact it turned out to be a much better course for me, with tough grassy sections, some hills and just the one ‘off the bike’ section per lap. My poor placing last week had moved me back down the grid this week, from the third row back to the 5th! An extra challenge from the start, especially as quite a few riders went down just after the start which I managed to avoid after a good start myself (again!). After that it was all about trying to hammer up the hard bits, hold it together and recover on the technical bits and try and do the hurdles reasonably well. This went ok until the second to last lap when I messed up the remount, ended up on the floor in the tape, then got back on only to realise that my saddle was now at 45° to the optimum angle! I carried on the best I could (out of the saddle more than normal) and finished 18th, massively better than last week!

Tim Phillips