After steadily building form week on week, I had a good hard week training and the weekend (Remembrance Sunday) saw me racing round 5 of the welsh cyclo-cross series in Blackweir Park Cardiff. On the warm up lap my legs felt really heavy and to top it off my crank came loose and fell off, so needless to say I though it was going to be one of those days.

Never the less, My plan was not to set the pace for the first lap unlike previous races, and just sit in behind the leaders to ease my legs into race pace, as in the few previous races I’ve gone off too quick and ended up struggling for the next few laps. By the end of the first lap I managed to gain a small gap on second place, which I saw as my opportunity to try and gain as much time as I could, as the course was quite rocky and technical so if anything was to happen then I’d have a small margin to get to the pits.

For the rest of the race I managed to slowly extend my gap to the finish and take my first win of the cross season. With a bit of extra confidence the week after my win, training was going well and I was getting pretty wound up for round 4 of the National Trophy series in Mallory Park Leicestershire. I knew that I’d have a hard race as I’m still gridded down the field which is always a battle to try and get in contention, as your big effort is to get to the leaders rather than to give the leaders a hard time.

However, I picked up my new Focus Mares Pro cross bikes in the week which were absolutely lush, and would make a big difference to my racing as opposed to my older bikes, which have had two many seasons racing two years ago! I got to the venue the day before and done a practise lap, to try out the course and to make small minor adjustments to my bikes on a cross course. The course was very hard pack in most places and was holding up well to the heavy rain which was in constant supply and my first thoughts of it would be ‘that it would be a fast race’.

Arriving at the venue the morning of the race my thoughts of a fast hard pack course was to change after the earlier races had cut up the course to a point where it resembled the motocross course alongside, rather than the cyclo-cross course it was intended to be. Never the less cross is meant to be muddy and a muddy race it was going to be….so get on with I suppose. Off the start I managed to come up alongside the bulk of riders in front of me, but a puncture saw me slowly go backwards and ending up nearly last in about 80th place going into the pits to change bikes.

After this I managed to push hard passing riders everywhere possible and by the end of the second lap I had worked my way up inside the top 12, which was a very good effort. However despite still moving up through the field my rear mech clogged in mud and was ripped clean off leaving me to run more than quarter of a lap to change back to my other bike. By the time I’d got to the pits I’d lost a lot of places, and the chase back began again. Passing riders again where ever I could, only to do another half lap before picking up another puncture and end my race.

I wasn’t the only one of the day to receive bad luck as out of the 80+ starters over 50 snapped rear mechs in the thick mud and countless punctures. One of the craziest races I’ve ever witnessed, and in the end there couldn’t have been more than 20 finishers! Despite the bad luck though, my legs actually felt like they had a bit of zip and I seem to be still gradually improving my form week after week.

Welsh Report & Results
http://new.britishcycling.org.uk/sport/article/cyx20091109-Report-Welsh-League-Round-5-0

National Trophy Report & Results
http://new.britishcycling.org.uk/cyclocross/article/cyx20091115-Cyclo-Cross-National-Trophy—Mallory-0

More Photos

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 10:46 am and is filed under Lee Williams, Team Wiggle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.