Midlands XC Marathon

Midlands XC Marathon 70km

Last Sunday was the midlands XC marathon a new edition to the series and I only decided to do it 2 weeks before then event, the weather leading up to the event was great, but the forecast very quickly turned bad for the weekend.

As I was driving up to Hanchurch it was raining very hard, I was thinking “this is going to be interesting” once arrived I parked up and signed on and took a quick look at the feed zone and the start/finish straight, then I sat back in the car as the rain started to throw it down!  I was sat in car getting ready making sure I had enough gels for the race, checking my tyres pressures; the race was looking more like the 4 hour mark with the rain and mud. With about 10 minutes to go I rolled down to the start and by then it had just stopped raining.

Even thou we had 70km to do the start was pretty fast and strung things out pretty quickly and the 100km riders set of in front and we were catching them very quickly and two of the lead riders quickly got away as they sat a fast pace, which I didn’t want to follow as I would pay for it later, by the end of the first lap I was in a small group of riders then the leaders came past as they had gone of course so I jumped onto the back of these two riders but the pace was still very fast so after a few minutes I decided to go to my own pace so now i was sitting in third with the leaders just ahead, for the next lap i could see the leaders just ahead sometimes i got closer other times they got further away a bit like a yoyo after a while i caught up to one of the riders on lap 3 and after a while i started to feel the pace and was back into third, then i was caught by 4^th place and by now the legs were

really feeling it, and I did the last lap on my own and finished in 4^th place.

Overall I was happy with the result as I hadn’t raced this length before, it has taken me a few day to recovery from it, it produced a high TSS score 290 you can find my race data here with power/hr (the elevation is wrong) http://tpks.ws/J9uL

Big thanks to all my sponsors for their continued support, my next race will be the 6/7^th July for the next round of the British series.

British XC Round 3 Hopton Woods

 British XC Round 3 Hopton Woods

This weekend was round 3 of the British XC and tough course with its relentless climbing, a big test for the legs.

We set of on Saturday morning for a bit of course practice; I was feeling up for this weekend as training has been going really, well with constant improvements, once we had arrived and set up, I had a quick lunch and set off shortly afterwards to go round the course. The course starts with a long climb which took around 8-10 minutes to the top, which was then followed by a quick decent which had numerous lines some much quicker than others, you had to really pay attention as you could easily make a mistake which could leave to an off and that could be race over! Another climb followed at the end of the first descent, for another few minutes which led into the second descent and most of the climbing was now completed, with a few more long descents to take us back down to the bottom.

On the last decent I was carrying a bit too much speed and lost my front wheel which sent me towards a tree which I just missed, fortunately I hadn't fallen off to hard but I was a tad sore afterwards, a bit of Sports tape helped once applied, I went round for another lap at just under race pace to get a better feel for the course and to sort out my lines.

Photos from British Cycling's photo stream via Andy Whitehouse

I was 25^th on the grid out 52 riders, and the start was manic, I tried to move through quick but it was hard due to the amount of traffic with riders everywhere, but my early efforts of moving through I was paying for by the top of the climb where the pace was still very fast and so I lost of few places.

Over the next few laps I worked hard and moved through, and on the last lap I was in a group of 3 13^th-15^th and the pace really kicked up, with constant attacks from the other two riders as we all tried to drop each other and with half a lap to go they had around 5-10 seconds on my which was held to the finish, I crossed the line in 15^th my best result to date, I am getting closer each time to a top 10.

I’m very pleased with this result.  MY RACE DATA. 

http://www.trainingpeaks.com/av/NFUGAZCIWQY33Q4ZUG32DEIDHA

Big thanks to Forme Bikes/ NectarFuel/ Forgoodness Shakes/Schwalbe/Prendas

All the sponsors above make a real difference helping me to reach my goals.