I couldn’t leave my cross career at one DNF race, so back for more in the final round of the Super Cross Cup which doubled up as a college intervarsity race. Sean Downey kindly lent me his cross bike so I could get a real feel for things. Unfortunately he’s a bit taller than me and his saddle was seized in place. I was stretching to reach the pedals but everything was a bit last minute and it was either deal with it or not race at all. So I raced.
The course was great, not overly muddy, really fast and fairly technical (at least becoming so with skinny tyres, rim brakes and a bike I wasn’t used to!). I was at the back of the pack at the start, and one of the girls got ahead of me. I kept her in sight and I managed to work my way up to her pretty quickly but for the first lap and a half we were dicing all the time. I bided my time and eventually got in front and began to pull away. Sliding all over the place through wet leaves, getting the all important balance between top speed and overshooting into the river, and hoping off to run up stone steps meant full concentration was needed.
By the fourth lap my calves were getting really sore from the high saddle, I was trying to stand up when possible but I meant I was loosing loads of energy that could have been used to go faster. It was really awkward hopping off the bike too! I forced myself to ignore pain and tried focus on catching whoever came into sight ahead. I was very happy to finish and was first female in the main and intervarsity race.
By the time I’d cycled 40 minutes home my legs felt like they’d spent the day on some sort of medieval torture rack! Great event though, and it’ll teach me to prepare further in advance next time.