I arrived to the race venue in Pippingford Saturday afternoon to sign on and collect race numbers as well as do a practise lap of the 20 km course. Just before the course opened there was a very heavy downpour which thankfully cleared for practice, but it did make the conditions pretty slick and unpredictable. The course was constantly up and down with a lot of rooty twisty single track. I had a little lie down on one of the corners towards the end of the lap leaving me with a slightly cut and bruised knee, but I was glad to find out that corner couldn’t be taken quickly in practice instead of the race.

Race morning rolled around and as I began to warm up it started to rain lightly. The elite women were setting off 15 minutes after the elite men and then behind the elite women were the support races. I was gridded 10th which put me on the second row. The start loop was up quite a steep gravel climb before turning onto a grass descent which put us on the main course. With it being a long race of 80km I was hoping to get a good start and position myself in the front group. Unfortunately, this didn’t quite go to plan as I was caught up in a crash just off the start. I then dug a little too deep to catch back up. I also lost a bottle on the first descent which left me without fluid for the first 10km of the race. In the beginning part of the first lap, I drifted back to 10th place and struggling to get over the extra effort I put in at the start and not having anything to drink. I kept pushing on as much as I could and when I got to a technical section, I caught 2 people and passed them putting me in 8th place. After what felt like forever, I finally got to the first pit and could get a bottle.

By the end of the first lap I was almost catching 7th place and by the top of the first climb on the second lap I had managed to latch onto her. We worked quite well together for the rest of the lap. It was at the halfway point (40km, end of lap 2) that I started to get cramp, at a very inconvenient time as the woman I was riding with jumped with a man that caught us. My next two laps felt painfully slow - I was really struggling from losing the bottle early on but I managed to keep pushing on as much as I could up the hills and riding the descents as clean and as fast as I could.

I finished my 4th and final lap to complete the 80 km race in 8th place in a pretty stacked field.

Kim Baptista

MTB XCM National Championships, 9 Jul 2023

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