Race Report: National Series Rnd 2, Cornwall

Thanks to Anna Buick for capturing my pain face!

 It is no coincidence that I have not put race reports up for my last 2 races. They have been crap so I didn’t want to dwell on them too much! I went into the first round of the National XC Series at Sherwood Pines full of confidence after a good result the week before. From the snow the day before the race to the general lethargy with which I rode the course, nothing particularly good happened! The next race was the second round of the MSG Eastern series at Codham Park in Essex. Great course, great weather, crap legs. End of story!

This weekend was the second round of the National XC Series at Wheal Maid in Cornwall. It took 5 ½ hours to get to the venue so I was praying for a decent course and legs worthy of the journey. We made it in time for first practice and, quite frankly, the course scared the crap out of me! Ever since my crash in February I have been even less confident on technical terrain than normal, especially on shoots and drops. This weekend was either going to kill me or make me stronger in this area. The course was basically just drop, drop, drop, climb, drop, drop, climb, repeat. Riding with Callum Riley and Imogen Buick (Newdales) helped slightly as they just made everything look easy but I still backed out of one section and repeatedly cocked up another.  On the morning of the race I got another couple of practice laps in with Andy Cockburn. I again tried and failed to ride the wall but felt much happier with the rest of the course. 

It's always nice to trick someone else into cleaning my bike for
me, especially since they generally do a better job than me!

I was gridded towards the back of the field based on the result from Sherwood and held my position off the line. After the first section of singletrack/ chutes I was still in the middle of a big group and on the following climb I managed to make up a couple of places. I had decided prior to the start I would take a couple of ‘b’ lines so I lost time on those each lap. While not feeling super strong I did feel like I was able to push myself and was able to minimise my losses to those around me. I knew from the start I wasn’t going to get a great result out of this race and losing 30 seconds per lap on ‘b’ lines didn’t help but

It's always nice

overall I was happy with how I rode. I was especially happy to keep the bike upright as there were quite a few injuries from falls on the unforgiving rocky course.

Callum crashed, injuring his wrist, in the race so I had to make alternative arrangements for the ride home or risk being stuck in Truro A&E indefinitely. On the way back with Andy conversation turned to how much training I was doing and looking back at the last few weeks, that turns out to be not much. I have been wary of over training but that has led to me only doing about 6 hours of training per week which probably explains why my legs have been pretty rubbish recently. This is especially poor considering I don’t even have to commute at the moment. Time to stop being lazy and work for what I want to achieve! 

Thanks to Giant Radlett for their continued support. I'll get a review up soon but it is fair to say the XTC Advanced SL destroys this type of terrain, it is only the pilot holding it back at the moment!