Gorrick Round 3 (2), Crowthorne

Sharp climb out of the arena

After a reasonably tough week of training, hopes were not high for this weekend’s race. As with the previous Gorrick race, I was using this as a hard training ride and not worrying too much about the result. There is nothing like starters orders to get you pushing your limits above what you can on a normal training session. Initially the leading 5 riders in the series were gridded, which was a bit pointless since none of them were present, then we were left standing for about 5 minutes which built the tension. Looking around it seemed like a quality field of riders and the usual worries about coming last started to surface. I really need to find some self confidence from somewhere! Finally we got our orders and from the gun I got a reasonable start from the back row. I quickly got onto the back of the lead group of riders and was still in touch when we entered the first single track section after a long fire road climb. Before the end of the first lap there were 3 separate crashes directly in front of me which held me up enough for me to lose the back of the group. Once I had lost this wheel, I never got back on and slowly dropped further back. After a reasonable first lap I tried to settle into a comfortable pace and tried to keep my lap times more consistent than last time where they pretty much fell off a cliff. I managed to overhaul 3 riders on the 3rd and 4th laps and, despite losing my chain towards the end of the 4th lap, held them off to the end.



Fun rooty singletrack a'plenty



The course was a good fun mix of single track with a few fire road sections and short, sharp power climbs to bring the pain. This is pretty much standard fare for Crowthorne and Gorrick but although much of the course was freshly cut it raced really well. It flowed well and rewarded smooth riding and there were plenty of roots waiting to take you down if you lost concentration. I felt surprisingly strong on the climbs towards the end of the race and found myself accidentally 'big ringing' the final climb on the last lap.

Looking at the results I am pretty happy with the performance. The top 7 were elite riders, along with a couple behind me. While I'm sure everyone will be hoping to improve before the first national series race at Sherwood Pines in 2 weeks, it should give me confidence going into that race, and next weekend. Hopefully I should have the demo Giant XTC 29er back for the next couple of races which is very exciting and I’m looking forward to seeing how it handles at race pace.



Thanks for UK-Biking and 1st Gear Cycles for allowing me to use their photos, and also the UK-Biking spectator in the feed zone for passing me my bottle after I yelled at him!