British MTB Championships

Last weekend was a busy one with a couple of races on and it started on Friday night when I headed to a round of the national circuit series in Beverly, Yorkshire. I had raced a couple of rounds of the series so I knew that it would be a hard race and that it would be flat out from the start so I got a good warm up and did some laps of the course which was in the town centre with some cobbles and wet corners. I lined up as near to the front as possible to get the best start which would make it easier earlier in the race and it started well keeping myself towards the front for the first three laps. Then on one of the wet right hander’s I slid out and subsequently rolled around on the floor which wasn’t great but I got up and decided to take a lap out before getting back in the race and getting involved before I put my chain into my spokes as I had bent my rear mech in the crash, so I fixed that and got going again when I decided to swap bikes and as I stopped I was told I couldn’t have more than one lap out which I should have known but since I’ve never had a lap out before in my life I wasn’t quite on it with the rules and found myself out of the race. Lesson learned, end of my night. Then the next day, Saturday morning I headed to British Mountain bike Championships down near London at Wasing Park. They have held a national series race here before so I knew before that the course was flat and most likely fast and that exactly how it was after I did three practice laps on Saturday afternoon. This was the first time I had been on my MTB for the past couple of months as I have been racing a block of road racing and it was great fun good to be blasting through the trails again.  After this I headed back to the hotel got some food then some sleep before race day on Sunday. I got a good warm up in on what turned out to be a hot day which was a nice surprise considering the amount of rain that has been around recently, after the warm up I got to the start and was gridded fifth so I chose the right hand side of the start. The start was flat out and I settled in second wheel for the first part before taking over the front for half a lap where I managed to open up a gap on everyone but team mate Kenta and he then took on the front and I hung on until the end of the first lap before he started to open up a gap on me. I chased for most of the second lap but paid the price for a fast first lap and got caught by second place and then was soon after caught by third place and found myself back down in fourth place. I then spent the next couple of laps in fourth place not riding well at all and seemingly hitting all the roots and holes I could find on the course. Going into the last lap I was still in fourth place but I was on the wheel of third place and I waited till a small climb in the course before putting in an attack to get away which worked and I found myself feeling better than I had earlier in the race so I continued to press on the pedals and began to bring back second place. By about half way through the last lap I had caught second place and it now looked like it was going to be a sprint for second, I knew I couldn’t let it come to a sprint as my sprint isn’t a strong point so I put the power down with about two km to go and opened up a 2/3 second gap which I held all the way to the line to finish in second place 45 seconds behind a fast Kenta Gee and making it a 1-2 for Boardman Team, a good day out.
Cheers for reading.Grant