So, as predicted this race was a quagmire. Waking up on Sunday morning with the rain splashing off the window, I knew it was either going to be a slick, slippy race or a tough, sloggy hour in the mud. By the time the Elite race began it was the latter.
Once again, I was gridded on the dead last row trying to gather a tactic to get through the mass of riders quickly, to avoid any hold ups. I had a crap start, and having a crap start on the last row of an elite cross race leaves you in last place. This only lasted for a couple of hundred metres though and I soon found myself amongst the riders where I feel my level is at the moment, roughly the top 20 at Trophy's I reckon. It was going well, a crash on the steep and slick descent raved about after last years heroic crashes lost me time and places. Its so tempting to bang on about excuses for why I crashed but hopefully you can see (from the video at the bottom) that the first crash wasn't really my fault. Anyway, I got going again and found myself getting back into the group of riders chasing a top 20 position. In a race like this, aswell as power, strength and fitness you need to use you're head and keep you're cool. Deciding when to run and take you're time can be vital in tough sloggy races where decisions like these can lose you minutes over the duration of an hour. Personally I feel that I made some poor decisions in this race, for example I rode a part of the course which was so sloggy and slippy that it was probably quicker to run. I put this down to a lack of cross racing this year so my head is still not quite 'in the game' but i'm getting there.
I corrected some poor decisions mid-race and started to move up the field, not as high up the field as I'd like but I showed a marked improvement from Derby a couple of weeks back. I settled in around 30th place for the last 20 minutes of the race and finished in 28th position a fair whack of time down but in races like that, seconds can become minutes almost instantly.
The race was a long one, 10mins longer than it should have been for the winner but it was a great event. I always find myself going strongest in the last half of races anyway so I could have gone round for 2 hours and might have won... There were a few complaints afterwards about the length of the race but I won't go into that, don't agree with those complaints to be honest, that's all i'll say.
It is now a month to go to the National Championships on the 7/8th of January in Ipswich. It should be a good event, the course map has just been released http://www.ip-cross.co.uk/cx/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=20&Itemid=18. It's all go in terms of training now, these last few weeks can be the most vital in the build up to the Nationals, staying fit and healthy aswell as getting some proper hard training in. I really can't wait to see how my form comes along in about 3 weeks time and then having no gridding disadvantage at the Championships is perfect, so will be looking forward to testing myself against the best in Britain when everyone wants to raise their game to come out on top.
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| Steep Muddy Bank, hardest part of the course, tough enough to walk up let alone run..with a bike on your shoulder. |
Video of the crazy muddy descent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT0kNL-wV0I&sns=fb My late bid for crash of the day was a favourite!
Full report, results and pictures of the day: http://www.britishcycling.org.uk/cyclocross/article/cyx20111210-Report--National-Trophy-Round-5--Bradford-0 Corine Walder's video is pretty cool, recommended!
That's all for now, keep an eye out for any more blog updates but for now you can follow me on twitter @TaylorJohnstone
Adios
Taylor
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