YCCA Summer Series Harrogate

Despite having ridden cx increasingly desperately (take note) for the last eight years and being utterly consumed by the discipline, I've never ridden a summer series race, let alone in truly bone dry conditions. Moreover, I've never ridden one slap bang in the middle of a bunch of TT's. So my trepidation at Wednesday was two fold - mental & physical. Cross is chaotic, random, uncontrollable. It's also physically the polar opposite of TTing, explosive, change of pace, start fast.....I could of played it safe and ridden the evening event, but the lure of thrashing round a cx course couldn't be resisted. Richard P mentions tyre pressures in his post. Give me 4" of Peel Park mud, and I know exactly what's required. Concrete like grass.......I was completely guessing.

I've never had any illusions, in terms of sprinting, milk turns faster than my legs at the start of a cx race. Bizarrely I get away with it in the Nat Trophy's because of the gridded starts and there's no bottlenecks due to a minimum course width. But there was no hiding place for me on Wednesday, not with 125 or so starters all lined up like something from Zulu Dawn. I had a perfect start, perhaps not quite as committed as I could have been but hit the start hard, clipped in at first attempt etc. But within 150m I was toast and the fast twitchers were away as I couldn't make the first turn in the top 20. Looking at the lap times, I lost a good half a minute on the first lap from my winter rivals, having to virtually walk through the first pass of the singletrack. Once settled in and the disappointment of the start forgotten, I basically found myself riding a grass crit turning in lap times that were in the ball park of what I'd hope for, picking up places each lap. In winter cross, usually I can get myself into a little group, catch my breath and then jump across to a group ahead on the heavy non technical bits. The speeds were simply to high to do this on Wednesday, every time I tried to jump across, I couldn't bridge the gap on my own because, simply not enough oomph (power). I'm no stranger to pain, indeed today I went through the finish at the YCF15 well over 180 heart rate and threw up after the finish, but there was one point after I'd tried to jump across to a group that felt harder....lots harder. 

I really rode to simply get a cx fix but despite this, I got really annoyed with myself as I could see my usual race rivals Mark Horrocks from Hope & Andy Peace about 30 sec in front of me but could I whittle the gap down, could I hell as like. I saw some of the local pals out there and young Bobbin (17 and built like an outhouse) seemed to be really motoring. It was really nice to see smiley Gill Crane out there as well having fun. On the last lap, coming under pressure from a chaser I had a superb moment through the downhill chicane which resulted in me taking about 25m of tape out and momentarily taking several stakes for a scrape along a playing field. Somehow I stayed on. 

I got lapped just before the line and finished 25th, happy with a couple of scrapes and bangs but thats the sport.....rugby for cyclists. Was great to see Richard's beaming smile post race after saying for so long he wanted a go. Hooked? I think he will be. 

Do I like summer cross? Yes massively, but not as much as the dirty version. But it sure as hell is more fun than mashing a big gear round up the A19 staring at a computer.......