Go on - what's the worst that can happen?!

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BY: Katie Carmichael

Published: 29th April, 2015

Sometimes there’s not much to say about a race. After round 1, round 2 was mercifully uneventful. Here’s how it went:

Lap one – I wasn’t the last to enter the singletrack after the first fire road climb – yahoo! I was working hard, heart rate was sky high and only a few people were passing me.

Lap two – I was still working hard. I was sitting in fourth and could see third. I hit the fire road climb and hit the wall. Negative thoughts crept in and I longed for the end of the race. I had a long way to go.

Lap three – I had a gel, maybe I was out of energy. The fire road climb still hurt. I thought about next week’s marathon champs. 75km. How would I cope?

Lap four – the end was in sight and my mood lifted. The post-race buzz kicked in early. Shouts of ‘Thanks’ to any marshal within earshot, and congratulations on a fab course to anyone who looked official. The end was in sight and thoughts of 'what am I doing here?' evaporated.

So, I ended 5th out of 5 finishers, 17 mins down on first place.  I’ve thought about what went wrong till I’ve bored myself, so I won’t rehearse the excuses here. I just wasn’t very quick.

On the plus side - there was some cracking natural single track. I felt like I’d had a clean run (the bruises on my legs tell a different story). The sun was shining. I was riding my bike. I didn’t need to wash it.


After my race I got chatting with one of the women in the senior category. I’d seen her out on my practice lap as we both made our way through the twisty, rooty, single track section. It was half an hour before the gun and she didn’t seem to be enjoying it much. I felt for her. I’ve been there. When I spoke with her afterwards, she’d had a good race, but she wondered whether a course like that would put some women off, and would be counter productive to all the work being done to boost female participation. I didn’t think much about it and agreed with her. It had been tricky, and would have been even more so had it rained, and that might have put some people off.

I mulled it over on my way home. Could organisers do more? Should courses be set so that the whole course can be ridden by everyone? It got me thinking about my first races…

Rewind to 2009. I met up with my uncle for the first time in years. He found out I was getting into mountain biking and suggested I try out one of the No Fuss ten hour races. He said they were a lot of fun and that he’d be at Kirroughtree. I’d never thought about racing. I signed up. I raced. It was a lot of fun.

2010 – Paul was toying with the idea of entering an SXC race. I chatted with a friend about it. She’d raced a couple of series. She told me what I could expect. She said I was capable and that I’d enjoy it. She said I should give it a go. I signed up.

Round one was back at Kirroughtree. This time it felt different. People seemed to be taking it seriously. Doubts crept in. I did a practice lap. I was rubbish. I struggled to get over any roots without my bike sliding all over the place, even on the flat. Paul gave encouragement. I received it badly.  There may have been tears. I was not going to race.

I ran out of time to have a full blown meltdown, and found myself on the start line. Someone next to me was riding flat pedals. Phew, maybe they weren’t all experts after all. The gun fired and I rode as hard as I could. The fast girls lapped me. I fell off a few times. I rode over the roots that had made me cry. I came first in masters.

To say that I never looked back would be a big lie. I have lost count of the number of times I have pre ridden a course and thought ‘well I just can’t ride it’. Over time I’ve realised that practice laps often seem harder than race laps. I’ve realised that not everyone rides everything. The best riders mess it up too. Some of my best races, particularly in the early days, involved making decisions on the practice lap about which sections I’d get off and run. That way I wasn’t getting myself in a state each lap, I wasn’t worried about the tricky bits, and I could just enjoy the race.

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