Welsh XC, Round 2

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BY: Melanie Alexander

Published: 7th March, 2011

Compared to round one the weather was fantastic. Little rain the week leading up to the second race meant the trails on the whole were fairly dry apart from one fire road descent. It was still very cold though! There was plenty of fun singletrack with sections you needed to stay alert for and the whole course worked well together with varied sections. It was an enjoyable course to race on.

It was Sally Gabriel form one planet that had a stormer of a start in the women's race as she sprinted off the start line. There was a bit of to and fro-ing on the first climb but I managed to sneak in front just in time for the first section of single track. I didn't practice this section in pre-race and it pleasantly went on for quite a while and flowed well despite a tricky rooty corner and finished with a drop down on to a fire road with the option of two lines to take one to the left and the other to the right of a tree. On this first attempt I didn't decide in time which line to take and rode straight in to the tree (hello elite rider here) and felt a bit of a twonk as there was a crowd there cheering people on. I quickly set off again before the other ladies saw me. More singletrack descending followed before a climb back to the arena then on to another loop further\away from the arena. This second section was faster, with a muddy fire road descent, a nice section of singletrack and a climb back in to the arena. At the end of the first lap I had a bit of a lead with Ruby Miller in second position (first expert) so I just settled in to a pace and held the gap until the end of the five laps. Ruby finished second and Sally Gabriel third.

The shorter laps worked well at this venue. I was really chuffed to see that my lap times from lap 2 to lap 5 only differed by 5 seconds, so good consistency is there I just need to continue working on speed and make my self hurt more.



We stuck around to watch the junior, masters and senior race. There was some close racing which made it interesting. George Rose and Phil Morris were battling it out in the Masters race, and looking at their faces George looked like he was saving himself but Phil still managed to gain a gap on the last two laps. The leading three senior riders also finished with seconds between them with Tom Bell just getting the win in front of Giles Drake and Jonathan Pugh. Ben Sumner won the junior again and also completed the fastest lap. Earlier in the day Jay Horton took the win over Mark Spratt and Mark James in the hotly contested vets race.

Well done to John Lloyd for the course design and thanks to Welsh Cycling for a well organised race with Scott and the rest of the team  making sure that complaints from the first round were addressed.

Thanks to Liam Grose for the photos, more can be seen on his website:
Liamgrosephotography.zenfolio.com

Thanks again to our sponsors: Gateway Cycles, Xcracer.com, Accelerade, Exposure Lights and Mt Zoom