Central CX Rd 3 Campbell Park, 25 Sep 2021

Note the big gap ahead of me! Photo: Blueshark

Ann Tur

After a ‘successful’ (i.e. not disastrous) comeback last week I was keen to give CX another go, especially as this was a venue I hadn’t raced at before - Campbell Park in central MK.

The weather was still good for CX, not cold and not raining! When I got to the course recce it didn’t seem too bad - one long drag up from the start and another on the back side of each lap. The other main features were one low set of hurdles, a tyre slalom, a very twisty up/down section (a potential lap 1 bottleneck), on off-camber descent and the most tricky part, a set of stairs followed by a sharp turn and steep descent (which I earmarked as my potential nemesis - correctly as it turned out).

Making this look much harder than it actually was. Photo: Blueshark

A poor start this week - didn’t clip in right away and had a surge of riders past me which is a depressing way to start a race when an uphill drag should have been in my favour. The first lap was very traffic-filled as a consequence and my plan to dismount early for the bottleneck section didn’t really help because it was too narrow to pass anyone - walking pace literally for a while. The race settled into a rhythm, gaining places on the uphill drag, maintaining most of the way around and losing places on the remount at the top of the steps (the other remounts were pretty good).

On the last lap I lost lots of time (but no places as the race was strung out) by messing up the remount at the top of the steps - missed the saddle and the pedals, and went down the descent on the top tube - a really painful way to do it! This did mean that the leader was about to catch me on the start-finish straight - someone shouted to me and I was able to slow down, let him pass me and save a lap of effort without losing any places - result! In the end I came 32nd/80, not too bad.

Tim Phillips