Having defeated the killer Shingles virus and enjoyed a race free weekend since Wasing, it was back to the UK on Sunday for the 4th round of the British series at Margam Park in Wales. The week leading up to the race was very wet and Saturday’s pre-ride was pretty grey and miserable with rain, half of the course covered in clouds and extremely slidey, muddy trails (the fun part!).
Unbelievably by Sunday morning the sun had come out and with temperatures hitting 31˚C I had my dream race conditions of heat and mud. We set off straight into a long climb finishing on a tough, off-camber slippery singletrack before hitting a fast muddy descent. By the top cyclocross pro Nikki Harris (Scott Contessa) had already pulled a gap and I’d got up to 3rd following Mel Spath (Cycleways), with Lee Craigie (Torq performance) just behind me. The course was ‘proper’ mountain biking with several huge long climbs, some short technical climbs, and lots of great singletrack descents with spectacular views out to the coast. The combination of long climbs and technical muddy trails meant riders were very quickly strung out and big gaps developed as the race went on. I clung on to Mel for just over a lap but eventually had to let her go – still have to make up that killer 2 minute difference 
.
The final climb of the lap was a monster, 7-8 minutes with several false summits, a headwind and sweltering heat and on lap 2 Lee jumped in front of me towards the top. I had to dig deep to hold on but eventually into the next lap she pulled away. Although the hills were tough, mud meant there wasn’t much pedalling to be done on the singletrack so there was plenty of time to recover before the next batch of pain. The descents were awesome, mostly narrow rutted trails covered in a thick layer of mud making for lots of fast, fun sliding around. One steep chute through the rhododendron bushes was particularly fun – 20cm deep mud meant brake free ‘bike-surfing’ sideways at high speed was the only option to get down it!
Coming into the last lap I was starting to feel destroyed, I had given up on catching Lee again and could only hope I had enough left to get around without being caught from behind since I knew I didn’t have much energy left for a fight. Then at the bottom of the first decent I passed Lee who had punctured. I gritted my teeth and sprinted to get around the corner out of sight and then somehow found some extra reserves to ride hard for the rest of the lap, not daring to look back, convinced she was seconds behind me. It was only the thought of a medal that dragged me up the last climb and from there it was a long fun descent and a never ending flat grassy field to the finish where I crossed the line in 3rd, delighted with the result (full results here). With 47 minutes in my top heartrate zone I was certainly trying hard but it’s great to feel able to do that again, calves are almost sorted!
photo credit: James Milnes
Margam is fantastic course that really separates the ‘mountain bikers’ from the ‘xc racers’ and made for some great results for the all the Irish riders with Mel and Robin both finishing 2nd! Thanks to WXC World Racing for all the assistance over the weekend. Kenda Nevegal/small block was the ultimate tyre combination for speed and grip in the mud, and my Spanish hill training came in very handy for coping with the heat.