Like hippos at the watering hole.

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BY: George Budd

Published: 28th April, 2014

R3 of the southern series was today at Crow Hill in the New Forest. Si Ernest was down there on holiday with his family and caravan and had reported people being towed out of the site as it was so horrendously muddy. Needless to say I wasn't exactly looking forward to it. I really don't like riding in those conditions. I'd also felt quite dead the day before on my usual 3hr local Mtb ride; clearly riding 320 miles/27hrs in each of the last 3 weeks has finally caught up with me!

I didn't bother with a practice lap - I've raced at Crow Hill quite a bit and know the trails. The state of the riders finishing the morning races made it clear this was the correct decision! I probably should have fitted some Rocket Rons but through laziness and a bit of a "que sera, sera" mentality I left the Ralphs on. Sat here writing this I'm not sure anything other than a Mud Shark would have helped today!

The race was cut to 4 laps as the laps were taking so long - 4 miles took nearly half an hour. It really was grim with bits of the course flooded. Not for the first time this year, one puddle was above my wheels. Nice. I got a reasonable start and settled into trying to maintain some sort of forward progress. I'm not the best when the conditions are like this, it's a combination of hating riding so slowly, getting fed up of going sideways and not being able to give it the beans. Sadly getting irritable just makes me ride like more of a muppet. I get such a buzz out of riding quickly that I find riding at 5mph just miserable. I rode with Scott Chappell and Chris Minter for 2 1/2 laps, Scott was much better than me through the mud but whenever it firmed up a bit or went uphill I caught and passed him again. Eventually the elastic snapped and I got a gap. On the last lap I was being told I was only 40secs off 4th. I upped the pace where it was possible to, but my slower pace on laps 1 and 2 whilst I had a bit of a sense of humour failure meant I had too much to do and finished 5th. Turns out from the results that 40 secs to 4th was a bit of optimistic encouragement! Last time Llewellyn beat me was in the snow at Sherwood last year, so he must revel in miserable races!

We ended up washing riders and bikes in a massive puddle in the arena (see pic on the other write up!), described as being like watching hippos at a watering hole, so I would imagine that dysentery or cholera will wipe out most of the elite field for next weekend's national at Redruth in Cornwall.

GB

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