South West CX Round 10

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BY: Stephen Steven Hodge

Published: 1st December, 2013

During these dark months I generally prefer the idea of not pinning a race number to myself or my bike in favour of simply getting the miles in on the bike and just relaxing (well keeping my HR out the danger zones) and enjoying the ride. But then I have the odd crazy thought of you do actually enjoy racing don’t you? So I have to go and prove to myself that yes is the answer to this question. The fact I’m sponsored and should probably fly my teams colours every so often have no bearing on this decision…

Today was round 10 of the South West’s CX series just 10min from my house and with entry on the day accepted I could leave it till about 30min before kick off to decide if I seriously want to do this… the only reason I’m so unsure about CX racing is that its EVERY SINGLE aspect of racing which I suck at!

Long story short I made it to the start line with a number pined to my jersey… gillet having done two practice laps I was relived to find the course had a hill and it had no stupid hurdles. The whistle went and we were off… well we just slowly rolled away actually, having not been on the front of the grid I was sat around the back so the start slowly propagated rearward. After about 2mins of riding my apparent iconic wheezing started kicking in the rest of my body rolling its eyes (yes I realise that sentence doesn’t really make sense) at the realisation that here we are again in a bike race!

I actually had a really fun race, my aim of the day was to be aggressive and actually race people, so to start with my task was to move forward my two trump cards of the day were POWER and being on a MTB over the ruts. So every straight bit I dropped the hammer and blasted past a number of riders yeah I know that sounds so big headed but it was darn satisfying reminding myself I am actually an Elite cyclist. I also took great pleasure in nipping past people in tight sections… I’m very sorry if this caused annoyance to anyone but it really is something I struggle with having the balls to do. After a highly rewarding 20min of racing I found myself not moving through the field quite as fast and found myself behind a number of familiar faces from xc races, it was at this point in the race where my primary objective was altered and I simply had to finish ahead of these riders.

For the next couple of laps I managed to make my way through both Ben and Gary from Certini and latched onto Fully Sussed (on a hard tail), Jay Horton’s tail sticking to his wheel for a while I regained composure and pushed on past up the hill. This was then cancelled out a couple of times until I managed to keep ahead, I then caught another familiar face on a MTB but I can’t recall the name so rider A he shall be called and just ahead of him was his team mate rider B on a CX bike positions juggled for a couple laps but essentially stayed the same for the rest of the race.

Going into the final lap I kicked going up the main hill pushing past the group with rider B keeping on my tail, hearing him right on my tail for a good number of bends it occurred to me he was on a CX bike so I pushed as hard as I could on the bits I know my MTB’s tyres had the main advantage I think rider B had the same theory as he pushed hard on the bits where I was at the disadvantage. On the course there was a long wide fast bend which I know the CX riders were struggling to keep traction on, thinking if I can keep ahead on the entry to this then push as fast as I can down it rider B might make a mistake, pushing as hard as I could to keep ahead on the entry rider B on my tail and then crash *curse*… chicka chicka yeah my plan worked. All I had to do now was hold onto this position through the ruts which I knew my bike had the advantage on. All I had to do was get through this tight loose bend…. Yeah I crashed luckily using tactics I’ve picked up from my dad of sprawling across the trail preventing anyone from passing I got back on my bike rode off and made it to the finish line ahead of them all… well just ahead of Ben… PHEW awesome racing!

I have no idea where I came, but I had great fun! My Mondraker Podium proved to me that it is such a great bike. This week it’s seen me through runs on our local DH tracks, 30miles on the moors yesterday a CX race today amazing.