Right now I'm rather busy trying to get my History A-Level Coursework done, I didn't believe my teacher said 'this part of the course is designed to make you fail'. It pains me to say, but he's right. You basically have to tear apart arguments of other historians, whom are, well let's face it, infinitely more intelligent than myself. I was also rather busy yesterday watching Wales win the six nations, I know this is a cycling blog but that was an amazing performance from Wales. Yeah, I'm Welsh, that may go some way to explain why I am so ridiculously pale...
Anyway, I managed to squeeze in a race. This was my first XC race of the year, and I hadn't finished an XC race since August, so the pressure was on! This was an Eastern Region race, round 1 of the 8 round series, run rather well by the folks at Mud Sweat and Gears. We're not exactly blessed with great mountain biking terrain in East Anglia (admittedly we do now have an olympic standard course...) but in the context of East Anglia a great course had been put together. Nice and flowy, with a bit of mud to make it interesting, plus it held up to the recent bad weather really, really well - I got away with running Racing Ralphs! Only 25 metres of elevation a lap mind you, it certainly felt like more.
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| Shenanigans; Silly or high-spirited behavior; mischief. Sounds about right... |
Conditions weren't looking good on the drive over, and I'm not a fan of rain or muddy conditions - luckily the weather held out and the track stayed dry-ish. Preparations were far from ideal, carb loading consisted of curry and beer and I was too ill to train on Monday and Tuesday so I crammed all of my training in the latter half of the Week. So believe me when I say I was surprised when I attacked on the second lap after getting a few bike lengths and saw no reply from my competitor and team mate, Will Kearse. I was pleasantly surprised indeed. I quickly built a gap and made it stick, by the time I was half through the 3rd lap I knew I had the win and was able to lift off the accelerator a bit and have some fun! I think I managed to win by a fair margin, a good 8 or 9 minutes, so it was rather nice to take such a big win. Especially after my poor performances in the winter!
Stats: http://app.strava.com/activities/44799772
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| Podium! |
Next for me XC wise is round 2 of the national points series in Cornwall, on the final weekend of April. In the meantime, I have races on the tarmac, the Braintree and Chelmer RRs.
So I'm definitely gathering form slowly and starting to look like I have a promising season ahead of me. I've just jinxed it, haven't I? Now back to that pesky coursework... Thanks for reading!
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