I woke up with a nice chest cough on the morning of the race and my legs were still feeling very dull from a heavy turbo session on Thursday. However, we had a great time last year at Black Park, so not doing it again this year was just not an option!
On the drive up there the sun was beating down and the forcase for the rest of the day was more of the same. Last years weather was equally good. Unfortunately we wern’t very prepared and ended up doing the whole race on one bottle of water! So this year we were a bit more prepared, bringing along plenty of bottles and Clare (wife), Claudia (mum) and Sarah (sister) from the UK-Biking support crew to hand them out.
We arrived with only around 50 mins to sort ourselves out. So quickly go to it and set off for a warm-up/recce lap. On the way round many we came across many familiar sections from last year, including very tight squeezes through trees, a couple of bridges (Mike’s favourite!) and some tight corners with angled roots to hamper and exit speeds.
Then it was back to the car for final preparations and onto the start line.
First up was myself and Si in the mixed masters/sport race. I felt pretty relaxed on the start line, chatting to Neil ‘raceright’ Macleod and Corby, who ‘claimed’ he was suffering from a chest infection. The gun/siren/shout went off and we got started. I’m not a particularly fast starter but I knew that there was some tight singletrack approaching, so made an effort to not drop to many places before reaching it. I think I was around 20th position at this point.
I’m not sure why thex mixed the masters and the sport race. There seemed to be good numbers of both, which did cause a few delays at bottlenecks on the first lap. Perhaps it may have been a better idea to send the masters off a minute after the sport. The board numbers were also mixed, so it was hard to judge who you were racing.
After emerging from the first singletrack section Corby flew past me, but I decided not to panic and keep to plan and hopefully catch him later in the race. However, 10 seconds later I see him standing on the side of the track sunbathing (later found out that he had broken a chain - bad luck mate).
For this race I was trying out the ‘Mark and Lap’ auto-lap feature on my new Garmin Edge 500 computer. The way this works is that before you start the race you take it to the point where a new lap starts (many races have an extra start straight) and mark the point on the unit. You then go and sit on the start line and press start straight away. Then when the race start it will automatically start the clock and do lapping at that point. Meaning you don’t have to touch it at all in the heat of battle. It worked perfectly, telling me my lap times, lap average heart rate, current heart rate and even told me what lap I was on (useful for a 7 lap race!).
For the first 3 laps, everytime I looked down at the Garmin I was right on my lactate threshold (30 min max heart rate). So I knew that wasn’t going to last the whole race. So I tried to relax a bit and get into a rhythm that would last me the distance.
The great thing about this race is that, although it is pan flat, it is actually quite technical at speed. You really have to concentrate on what is coming up on you, as there is not much time to process it before you are on top of it! So each lap I tried to get better at each bit, enabling me to keep my speed but ease off on the heart rate a bit. I’m a bit fan of efficiency!
Shortly after our race started Mike and Fry set off in the Veterans race. I have been racing at around the same pace as Mike for a while now. So I wasn’t expecting to see him in the race. How wrong I was. He flew past me on lap 5. It would seem that all those years riding around the rooty course at Verwood had paid dividends for him today!
However, I felt I was going well, so just kept pushing on, trying to keep as fast a pace I could. On the last lap I was feeling pretty good and could see a couple of riders up ahead. I put in the last bit of physical and mental energy I had left in an attempt to catch the, incase they were masters. I caught them and went past at quite a good pace and with only around 5 minutes to the finish line tried to carry on at that speed. As I approached the last couple of corners I could hear somebody approaching behind quite rapidly. Not wanting to take any chances I stood up on the bike and sprinted for the line and put in a gap. I’m glad I did as it was actually two people, both in my race!
Fantastic race but I am now paying for it with a very beaten up back from the roots. Thanks to everyone involved in putting on the race and also to the excellent UKB Support Crew.
UK-Biking results:
Simon Lesser - 7th Masters
Richard Lang - 14 Masters
Mike Radburn - 8th Veterans
Mark Fry - 24th Veterans (good result Mark)
Next race for me is Gorrick round 4 at PorridgePot in two weeks, although I think I will sneek in a Wessex League road race next weekend if my back in recovered. Team UK-Biking.net will also have riders at the first British Mountain Biking Series race at Sherwood.
