Race Report – Round 3 of the Central Cyclo-Cross league, Hemel Hempstead

In preparation for my 4th ever CX race last Sunday, I confidently spent Saturday cleaning my bike and getting ready to go get smashed and heckle at the Condors AGM…

The start was perfect – I was glued onto Andy’s wheel, so the plan was to just relax and hold my position up the first gruelling climb of the course. The climb immediately split everyone, with Andy and me settling into a group of 5 or so.

The first two laps were fast! Really fast (sub 7 min laps) putting me in a strong racing position. Then something terrible happened… I cracked, like the novice I am.

I hadn’t eaten properly the day before (cleaning bikes was all the prep I needed, yo) and I had consumed so much alcohol the night prior, that doing star jumps on the roundabout on the way home was, by far, more important than the looming race the next day.

The third ascent of that climb saw me drift backwards with welling feelings of nausea, I watched Andy’s group soar off into the distance. My lap times got longer and longer, peaking at 7 min 46s (a long way off 6 min 35 s for the first lap). 

The next 7 laps were lonely, only broken up by me catching/lapping the odd rider and more frequently, me being lapped by the big dogs. Fortunately my dedicated fan club (Becci Curtis) chose not to inform me that the gap between me and Andy’s group was growing at each lap and I fought on in the deluded belief that I could get back into this race. I didn’t. I would have crossed the line alone if it wasn’t for the decency of a Pedalworks rider to catch me in the last 100 m and initiate a sprint finish… which I lost.

Cyclocross is hard, really hard. There is nowhere to hide like in road racing and it’s almost impossible to pace yourself like in a TT. It’s just all out big engine and technical handling, of which I currently have neither. However, I am improving! I felt better in the corners and more confident than my previous CX races, and my remounting is improving vastly, so much so I can pretty much do a full running remount and still hope to have children.

Despite not having the best day in the saddle, I’m still glad I raced and can’t recommend CX highly enough – it is good fun, honestly.