Need a bigger frying pan!

Saturday.

Up to the home of British Cycling in Manchester again to display the bikes at the penultimate round of the Revolution series. We assembled a bike that had been built as a one-off for Chris Newton, resplendant with Mavic Io 5-spoke and rear Comete disk. Captaining the Condor Rollers team, Chris dominated the points races while Geraint Thomas gave Clancy a run for his money in the Scratch race.


Sunday.

Photo: Winston, Rollapaluza.

Final round of the National Trophy at Rutland Water. Organiser of the UK's equivalent to Paris Roubaix, the East Midlands Cicle Classic, Colin Clews has for the past two years now, turned his now legendary organiser skills to Cyclocross as well.

Having had 4 weeks off from racing, with precious little training either, I had low expectations of my impending performance at the final round of the National Trophy. Chatting to the Rollapaluza guys beforehand, I backed myself to go for 30mins before one of the numerous Belgian pro's caught me.

In actual fact, I wasn't too disappointed with how I felt once we got going. Casualties were plentyful owing to the super greasy surface. At my end of the field, riders were going down left, right and centre as they struggled to hold lines to avoid trees and course markers.

Waters went down a treat just in front of me but managed to right himself before pulling away from me -we spent all season riding away from one another. I in turn, managed to ride away from a couple of the other Londoners, against whom I can normally guage my own preformance.

27 minutes gone as I passed through the Start/Finish., that's pretty much my half-hour done I thought. Another half lap, through the tricky deep mud, up the steps, remount and...

Little ring, middle of the cassette and not even under a great deal of pressure!

At that point I still had a good 3 minutes on the lead Belgian and would have got to the end of that lap, leaving me another lap to do before being pulled.

Gutted. At the end of my first attempt to ride the National Trophy series, I realise now that you need two bikes, just to take part. In a league event, on bad days, you need two, to contest places but at a Trophy it's essential. Takes a bigger frying pan for those bigger fish I guess!

As the seaon draws to a close, I have fewer results to look back on but have learnt much. I won't have done enough rounds to get an overall in the London League, but that was never my focus. At the same time, I DNF'd two of tht Trophies and missed one so, nothing to write home about there either.

Have determined to head to Belgium this weekend for the Masters World Champs in Mol, with my focus now on doing the best I can at the National Champs in Feb.