Event Reports

I was looking forward to this event, although my last race was the Yorkshire last September and since then I'd hardly ridden, changed bikes, put on a stone, and drunk loads of beer so probably not in the best condition.

From the club it was myself, Geraint, and Andy Cooke, and as Geraint wasn't driving we made it to the forest in plenty of time to sort ourselves out, look at the sky, pray for the rain to stop etc. which it did, thankfully as the first riders set off. Since I poked myself in the eye last year I hate riding without goggles - especially round forests like this one with loads of overhanging branches.

 Check times for clubmen were 60, 30, then 60, 22 and 60, 28 so looking like a sneaky tight check in the middle of the race, over 40's were on the same time schedule and set off ahead of the clubmen. Myself and Cookie were on the same minute and my plan was to try and follow him round, as he's been rapid the last few times I've seen him ride, however my bike fired up first kick and his didn't seem to co-operate so I left him in a cloud of 2-stroke fumes and changed my plan to "hang onto him when he comes past" but he never did......

The course was all familiar Langdale stuff, but slippy in places due to the overnight rain, I felt pretty good initially but soon developed really bad arm pump to the point where I couldn't grip on properly so I just sat down and started riding like a big girls blouse. The first check is pretty long, most of it in the trees and fairly tight so there was nowhere to get a rest and get my hands going, the first bit of fire road (more than 50m long) must have been at least half an hour into the check. I arrived at the check with time to spare, despite riding like a complete tool and had a quick chat with Geraint who was waiting for his minute.

 2nd check didn't go much better with loads of snidey across the ruts stuff to batter my hands and arms even more and my riding was falling apart - 5 mins late at the check, even on the slack times. Doh!!! but at least I'd seen Andy Cooke who told me he'd fallen off after 100m going over a log, tweaked his knee and sacked the day off, still at least he had the decency to step up as pit bitch.

A quick breather in the pits as the fuel went in seemed to really help as exiting the pits I was straight up on the pegs, for at least 100m until I launched the bike going over the same log Andy came a cropper on - it was a bit like when the booster rockets separate from the space shuttle as I parted company with the bike and hit the ground hard in the middle of the track. I lay on the floor for a while to see if anyone would do me a favour and run me over but sadly nobody came, and I wasn't badly hurt enough to retire so I picked the bike up and continued.

Maybe the adrenaline kicked my brain into gear, or maybe the course chewed up nicely, but my riding was now back on some kind of form and the arm pump was gone, I was actually enjoying myself! the remainder of the race was good fun, I managed to find a bit of pace on the 2nd lap but was pretty knackered for the 3rd and pretty much toured round bumping into trees and falling over in corners for no good reason.

Results were out quickly, I dropped 15 mins on the day and managed a pathetic 13th out of 19 finishers in the clubmen, Geraint had a decent day only dropping 4 mins for 6th in the vets, Andy cooke took 2 tubs of fuel home with him.

Well done has to be said to NEEC for putting on another well organised timecard event, cracking course with a good variety of terrain.