National XC Championships - Wasing Park

Apparently we have a couple of weeks of acceptable weather and all of a sudden I forget to update my blog. Poor show! Over the last 4 weeks I have had 3 races, one biggie and 2 chippers. The most important race amongst this was the National Championships 2 weeks ago at Wasing Park. After a week on holiday in the Lake District doing a little bit of MTB, a couple of road rides and some hiking I made the long drive from Keswick to Wasing, via Cambridge to drop Emma off. A solid 8 hours of driving is not generally considered the best pre-race preparation but short of buying a helicopter I had no other option!
The course had managed to dry out nicely with a couple of warm dry days preceding the race, with the exception of one muddy section containing the new triple arrow technical feature.  It was largely unchanged from the Southern Championships earlier in the year and was running nice and fast. On the practice lap I happened upon Jo Munden who was suffering from heat stroke and lying on the floor begging for people to pour their energy drink on her in an effort to cool her down. This served as a good reminder that it was a hot day and hydration was key so once back at the car I made an effort to drink my body weight in water before the start. In hindsight doing this the night before so that I didn't need a wee as soon as I was on the start line would have been a good idea. Pushing the urge to wet myself to the back of my mind I got a good start from my position towards the back of the grid. I clipped in cleanly and managed to move up a few places without getting caught up in any crashes. The first section was a longish shallow climb up to the first wood section and unlike the Southern Champs I managed to sit comfortably in the pack rather than going straight out the back door. The first half of the lap was spent in a queue of riders weaving through the woods. I resisted the urge to try overtaking and just concentrated on conserving energy until it opened up a little, although I did managed to make up a couple of sneaky places by taking the chicken run on the log steps while others queued for the A line. By the end of the lap there was more space opening up and I found myself on the wheel of long time adversary Mark Davies. We had a good battle for about 3 laps with him being quicker on some sections and me on others making it a constant game of cat and mouse. On lap 3 I passed Mark on the fireroad at the end of the lap and he must have run out of energy because I didn't see him again after this. Just as I made the turn to start my final lap I saw Liam Killeen coming in to take the win so I managed to meet my main goal of not getting lapped, but only just! The final lap was pretty loanly and as I was the last person to make it onto their final lap I knew I could not lose a place but the constant glimpses of riders in front of me spurred me on a bit. I managed to make up one place and came from a long way back to have a sprint to the line for another place but just ran out of course before I could get my nose ahead.
Overall I think this was probably my best ride of the season. i felt strong from the start, I was riding pretty well on the technical stuff and my lap times were reasonably consistent so my endurance is obviously OK. There was some really close racing and I was hardly ever alone on the track which is a common problem in most Expert races. It was also nice to beat a few Elite's and be racing against guys who are normally a good few minutes up the road.

The other two races were rounds 2 and 3 of the Rampage series. The second round was a carbon copy of the first, a bit of a shit-fest with deep mud everywhere and a bit of a war of attrition. My back brake completely failed on the first lap so I crawled my way around for the rest of the 5 lap race very carefully to avoid crashing and took my second win of the series. Round 3 was slightly dryer with about half the course having dried and the other half still muddy. I came into this race with 3 hours sleep on Friday night after a work do, and 70 miles on the road in my legs from Saturday. Safe to say I did not have it all my own way. Paul Brenan got ahead early on the first lap and spent the race building a minute and a half lead. I had a close ride with Ryan Keynes for the first 2 laps before escaping when he made a mistake to come home second and in no-mans land. The final round of the series is in 2 weeks time and I will have to take it reasonably seriously to take the overall series title as it is best of 3 and I cant afford for Paul to win again!
I am struggling with motivation to train at the moment with no real targets for quite a while and a lot of racing in my legs. I almost want some crappy weather to force me onto the turbo so I can smash out some hard intervals to concentrate my mind again. On the other hand, my tan lines are improving steadily so some more sun would be good to improve those further!