Eastern Cyclo Cross League 4 - Sat Oct 1st 2011

With record breaking temperatures and cyclo-cross racing going together like a Colnago fitted with a Shimano Tiagra groupset; Myself, Steve James and Tim Brown, on his cyclo-cross debut, lined up at the start of the CC Ashwell vets race at Baldock on the hottest October day ever registered in the Kingdom.   

The usual Kamikaze dive into the first narrowing on the course was complicated by a rider dropping a chain and an early faller.    This held up the North Road guys a little but they where soon into their stride and got some early testing of their dis-mounting and re-mounting the bike, after some frantic mid-week training at Gosling Stadium on the dark arts of cyclo-cross riding.  All reported a significant improvement on this aspect of their riding.

I got away early, was caught by a hard charging Tim, who then suffered a mechanical and had to work doubly hard to catch me up  again and make a little further progress up the field.   A couple of Welwyn Wheelers riders just ahead of the North Road duo provided some tempting local ‘target bunnies’ so the pace was relentless on a baking hot day.

Steve was a little further back but battled on manfully, even surviving a face-plant into the side of a small hillock.  I suppose thats one way of getting some sort of rest in a cyclo-cross race!   All of us where at the very end of our energy supplies at the end of the race - clearly there is hard racing, and then very hard racing, and then cyclo-cross.  

Tim was first home for the North Road in 22nd place, then me in 24th, with Steve in 46th with 71 starters.  The winner, Dave McMullen a 60 plus vet (to quote Tony May ‘I’ll get my coat’) finished 5-40, 6-03 and a lap and 1-35 (respectively) ahead of the North Road riders.