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Hi all,
R3 of the southern series was today at Crow Hill in the New Forest. A mate of mine was down there on holiday with his caravan and had reported people being towed out of the site as it was so horrendously muddy. Needless to say I wasn't exactly looking forward to it. I'd also felt quite dead the day before on my usual 3hr local Mtb ride; clearly riding 320 miles/27hrs in each of the last 3 weeks has finally caught up with me!
I didn't bother with a practice lap - I've raced at Crow Hill quite a bit and know the trails. The state of the riders finishing the morning races made it clear this was the correct decision! I probably should have fitted some Rocket Rons but through laziness and a bit of que sera, sera mentality I left the Ralphs on. Sat here writing this I'm not sure anything other than a Mud Shark would have helped today!
The race was cut to 4 laps as the laps were taking so long - 4 miles took nearly half an hour. It really was grim with bits of the course flooded. Not for the first time this year, one puddle was above my wheels. Nice. I got a reasonable start and settled into trying to maintain some sort of forward progress. I'm not the best when the conditions are like this, it's a combination of hating riding so slowly, getting fed up of going sideways and not being able to give it the beans. I get such a buzz out of riding quickly that I find riding at 5mph just miserable. I rode with Scott Chappell and Chris Minter for 3 laps, Scott was better than me through the mud but whenever it firmed up a bit or went uphill I caught and passed him again. Eventually the elastic snapped and I got a gap. On the last lap I was being told I was only 40secs off 4th. I upped the pace where it was possible to, but my slower pace on laps 1 and 2 whilst I had a bit of a sense of humour failure meant I had too much to do and finished 5th.
We ended up washing riders and bikes in a massive puddle in the arena, so I would imagine that dysentery or cholera will wipe out most of the elite field for next weekend's national at Redruth in Cornwall.
GB
Glad I didn't bother then! Good effort.
I did a short road ride through the NF today and it was bloody wet off the sides. I've never been to crow hill but I was glad I was on the road today
It was surprisingly sloshy in the forest yesterday before the nights rain. I guess although the puddles had evaporated a bit in the last few weeks the ground is still saturated, so another lashing down has just topped it all up again.
I used to love racing in those conditions though and always did best when everyone else lost hope 😀
Thinks about category change for next Sunday's Kawasaki 100......