Margam Park was the second round of the XCO national point series. The first round clashed with CICLE classic a few weeks back but I had looked at pictures and the course there looked super fun and technical and whilst it wasn’t in the same place I was expecting it to be somewhat similar.

I arrived at the course Saturday morning so that I had plenty of time to do some practise laps and get a good feel for the course. I did one lap in the first practice block and was disappointed with the course. There were no A and B line splits and nothing really that technical other than a switch back, steep, rocky climb. In the second block of practice I did a few more laps as I knew with the lack of A and B line splits the corners, descents and the technical part of the climb really had to be dialled in.

With the elite women’s field being stacked with riders like Evie Richards I was hoping to move up from my gridded place of 21st into the top 10. I thought this was an aspirational target and that I'd actually finish just outside the top 10. The race got underway and with the first section of the course being a long uphill, with the technical section coming right at the top I wanted to move up as quickly as I could in the hope of getting a clean run at the technical section. I managed to move up to 12th place by the time the track narrowed down which I was pleased with as I’d moved up significantly without going too far into the red.

When the track widened again, I managed to pass another rider which meant I hit the first descent in 11th place, I felt as if I could have gone faster down the descent but with it being a single track there was no way of passing at this point in the course. I got to the bottom of the descent and through the river crossing in a small group with two other riders. The course then went back uphill where we caught another rider which meant I was in the group fighting for 10th place. At the end of lap 1 we caught another rider who never managed to latch onto our small group. Up the hill on lap 2 I got distanced by two of the riders which I was a little worried about at first until I managed to close the gap on the technical section of the climb and then catch them on the descent. On the climb after the river crossing the group got whittled down slightly and 4 became 3.

On the 3rd lap the exact same thing happened again - I got distanced up the climb and caught back on the descent - by this point I realised they were much stronger than me up the climb, but I was much faster on the descents. So on the climb I put a little dig in as one of them had made a mistake on the river crossing. This paid off and the group of three was now just 2 and we were riding for 7th and 8th place. Lap 4 was pretty steady, and nothing changed much but it was noticeable that we had closed the gap down to 6th place.

On lap 5 before the climb narrowed, I put a small effort in so that I could be on the front for the technical climb and in doing so I managed to put some distance between me and 8th place. I pushed on over the climb and down the descent as I thought this was my chance to get away. At the river crossing I realised I was really close to 6th so I continued pressing on and managed to catch and pass her on the next section of climb. On the last lap I continued the effort and was rewarded by crossing the finish line in P6.

It’s fair to say I think I have more in the bag in races to come as with the cross country marathons I’ve been doing lately I only really felt like my legs came on the last two laps.

Kim Baptista

National Series MTB XCO Rd 2 Margam Park, 16 Apr 2023

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