Wednesday 25 February 2009

Race Report: Thetford Winter Series Round 4

Excellent photos from www.tankduck.com
The last round of Thetford Winter Series was held on Sunday 22 February 2009. This is a very popular MTB race series at one of my favourite off-road riding locations – Thetford Forest. I’d managed 15th in the first race (out of 211), 11th in the second (out of 195), but crashed out of the third race (at Rendlesham in Suffolk) in a start line pile-up in the freezing cold and pouring ran that left me with a badly bruised leg and a sliced kneecap (leg subsequently went an alarming shade of yellow, nut fortunately remained attached).

This time I was looking for payback and a good solid result to count towards the best 3 results that make up the series rankings. Still standing 21st overall despite only finishing 2 of the 3 previous races, I was gridded near the front. Fellow London Phoenix rider and riding buddy Stuart blagged his way to the front with me, and went on to overtake me following the start (cheeky beggar). I was deliberately being a bit cautious as I didn’t want to get caught up in any more accidents! Stuart stayed in front for part of the first lap, and I narrowly avoided another crash in the first singletrack section.

The course was absolutely superb! Pretty much dry (apart from a few areas) and offering just the right amount of grip to rail through the many bermed corners between the trees, ‘speeder-bike’ style (think Star Wars: Return of the Jedi). Throw in some fireroad sections, add a couple of short but reasonably demanding climbs, and the course had just about everything (other than the usual ‘bomb holes’). My lap times for the 7.6 mile course were all in the 33-34 minute range, and after the slowish start, I started to move through the field a bit. Traffic on some sections was an issue, and number of times my earlier efforts to drop other riders came to nothing as I got stuck in a traffic jam in the very narrow sections. By the last of the 4 laps I was battling with 2 other riders who had overtaken me on a fireroad section and were clearly on a mission. Sitting ‘third wheel’ and coming into the last climb, the bumpy ‘Plumbuster’, I overtook one of them and then halfway up the climb went past the other, managing to slot in 3 backmarkers between us by the top (a good security measure). The last 2 short sections were much wider, so I put the hammer down up the last uphill section to come in 14th (out of 183). Pretty happy with that, but most of all I had a great time on the bike (which performed perfectly as usual).
Honourable mentions go to all my team mates, including Matt Webber who, with the help of some Go gels, passed me on lap 3 to finish 10th and Stuart Lockyear, who was a very creditable 10th in the Vets.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Mary was here and very much enjoyed reading your blog!
Thank You!!