Sometimes its about the racing rather than the result.

Round 7 saw me racing regardless of this annoying flu like bug that isn’t anything more sinister than just damn right annoying! It’s not a cough, it’s not a cold and it’s not covid but it’s a real pain which elevates my heart rate and restricts my sustained power output, perfect for cross! I raced regardless of a weeks failed training efforts and I’m really glad I did which, for the record, you shouldn’t do. With the actual result put to one side, I scored some good points and had some great tactical racing to boot.

Phil Wilks and Matt Smith along with some other riders pulled me back a few laps from the end and I couldn’t stay with them so chose, yeah, lets say chose to let them go. In truth, I had to back off, my heart was already bouncing off my insides at 187bpm with an eventual 47 minute average of 179bpm!

I really enjoyed the circuit that the Pedalon team put on and the technical stuff really suited me. I used this as I needed to make ground up on the riders who were physically stronger on the day or build a good gap on them for them to have to bridge. It worked, which was great as I was making this stuff up on the fly and beginning to make silly mistakes whlie trying to hold myself together.

Anyway, after regaining a little composure on the second to last lap I went all in for the final one and half laps and found myself 2 places and back into the top 10. Could I have caught Jamie Norfolk who was 5 seconds ahead, could I? At that effort and on a fast circuit, 5 seconds is a very long way indeed. I’ll have to settle for 9th then.

It was very hard but there was some awesome racing to be had. Thanks for a great one guys and see you at Andover.