Last weekend I travelled down to Plymouth Moto X Park for round
10 of the South West cyclocross series. Due to not having a cross bike and my
29er being replaced under warranty, the Sowdens kindly lent me their cross bike
to race on, it had tubs the lot.
I was quite nervous on arrival as I wasn’t sure what to
expect as I hadn’t raced any cyclocross so far this season, Dexter Hurlock was
also racing so I knew it wasn't going to be easy. After the pre-race chit chat
and a few practice laps to get the feel for riding a cross bike again it was
time to line up, I knew I’d have to start near the back as it was my first race
of the series, this meant I had some chasing to do.
As the gun went I quickly tried to get myself into a half
decent position my spotting the gaps and going for it, I comfortably got myself
into the top ten sooner than I expected but quickly discovered that Dexter and
Matt Loake had already gained a small gap on the rest of the field.
I felt pretty strong so managed to work my way through the
field and then set about chasing Dexter and Matt down, I was determined to
catch them and after around three laps I managed to bridge across which felt
like a victory in itself.
As soon as I had jumped across Dexter began to up the pace
but I wasn’t going to let him go after I’d put all that effort in to close the
gap, we started to open up a healthy lead on the rest of the field and the race
was on.
The battle eventually came down to the bell (final lap), I
wasn’t overly confident of outdoing Dexter as he has pretty much been
unstoppable all year and the fall near the start of the last lap didn’t exactly
help my situation but I was determined and in the zone and wasn’t going to give
up without a fight.
The chase was back on until Dexter’s chain came off which
meant I gained a bit of ground on him, he soon managed to claw his way back
again though, luckily for me I had the lead which played to my advantage as I
could basically keep the speed up on the straights and hold my line through the
corners which made it difficult for Dex to pass. Coming into the final few
corners he tried to creep up the inside but I wasn’t going to let that happen
so got my lean on, all I had to do then was then hold my nerve all the way to
the line which I did and I felt absolutely ecstatic to get the win and to beat
Dexter who is the South West cyclocross and South West mountain bike champion.
Big thanks to Roy Wyle Smith and his crew for putting on
such a great event and thanks to all the crowd who made it such an awesome
atmosphere to race in, cow bells, horns, Mexican waves the whole lot was going
on.
I’m now thoroughly looking forward to my next race which is
Soggy Bottom R2 at Newnham Park on December 15th.
Big thank you to Mullet Snaps for the photos, please go and like his facebook page https://www.facebook.com/MulletSnaps
