CXNE at Gateshead Stadium on Sunday represented the start of my CX season. I'd done Yarm in early September, but that seems eons gone. After a four week hiatus due to a combination of other commitments, it looked, felt and smelt like the first race of the season. Other commitments? What could possibly be more important that racing. Commitments such as chasing our cxmagazine.com supported riders around the Three Peaks with a plethora of spares magic recuperative gels in a noisy Land Rover. Very satisfying but disappointing to find we couldn’t get a pint after the race!
So Gateshead stadium it was to be. After the torrential mid week rain, Sunday dawned bright and dry to leave a grassy course that was wholly rideable. A couple of dodgy off camber sections but nothing particularly challenging technique wise. For a first race back, perfect…..
With round one of the National Trophy in a weeks time, I thought I had better be brave and finally christen my ‘A’ bike, complete with my new, secret weapon tub/tyre pressure combination. Despite being somewhat 'lastminute.com' in fettling the bike, it felt wicked on the warm up and after my fourth and final practice lap, the nerves calmed and it was time to grid.
With a couple of missed rounds, I was relegated back on the grid but that was cool. No pressure for the Yorkshire lad with a weak start. Bang! Clipped in first time, click-PLF, click-PLF, ram it across the cassette and wait for the pain to hit. The agricultural nature of SRAM is the perfect system for ‘cross. You know you’ve got the gear because you feel the gear go in, you hear the gear go in. No doubt.
So off we went, through the double taped dead turns and onto the off camber. Then one of those things happens. The things that cross riders accept and deal with. A kafuffle of legs, arms and unglued tubs. It cost me about four places as I gazelled over the mess. The race had formed. A lead group of about ten or so, then a group of four including myself.
I have always been a little tactically weak, a bit of a blunt instrument. But I have to say what happened next demonstrated just how much I developed over last season. A season that took me six months to recover from mentally but left me significantly much more composed. It was absolutely clear to me at this point that was unlikely to get across to the group of ten. My three companions were a guy from Derwentside, strong constant, technically tidy, another guy who was seriously suffering and a guy from Cumbria. I was in coming out of the red from the start but I was already weighing up my companions. Woosh, the guy from Cumbria came around me on the tarmac uphill drag. He seemed very keen to show us how strong he was, and so early in the race. So I just sat on him.. wheel sucked. I saw that he’d gone massively anerobic and was really trying to recover on the tricky descent. I noticed he made mistakes. I sat in….watched, let it develop.
Lap two, again we had a show of anerobic power and dodgy drunk on lactic acid descending from our man from across the Pennines. And on lap three it continued. Knowing that there are only so many matches one can burn, I decided to sit and wait. Invisible at the back of the group …..tick-tock-tick-tock BANG. The inevitable happened.
That was it, I was free with only the guy from Derwentside for company.
With two laps to go, my partner and I were driving hard. At one point regaining the lead group started to look a prospect. But we simply ran out of race. As we took the bell I started thinking about the sprint, I guess the other guy did too. For some strange reason, rather than let him do another lap, I decided to come through with the intention of riding half a lap hard to keep the chasers at bay and then sorting it out at the finish. It seemed the right thing to do. A little like pistols at dawn.
But as is the way, it’s rare that a battle plan survives contact with the enemy. I came through and rode the headwind flat section and realsied that his shadow wasn't in my field of vision. I looked round......I had a gap....... barely ten metres, unintentional, I felt a little guilty, but it would be rude not to wouldn’t it?
Whereas I’d gone up the course on the 38 ring and come down in the 44 each lap this time I thought ‘shit or bust’. Going up the steepest bank on the course the last time, I decided to hit it really hard out the seat in 44x28 and then rammed it up the gears SRAM style through the twists and turns of the descent to the line, new headset rattling like a jackhammer.
I came away with 10th in the vets race about half a lap down. The result was immaterial, I'd had a race, a reasonably considered one at that and still got beaten by a load of other old blokes also having fun.
I drove home listening to the Sweedish Hose Mafia VERY loud and euphoric, fueled on a McRecovery Happy Meal.
I love cyclocross me…..
Steve
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