Queen Victoria Cross and such

Its been a while, busy I guess. The Lance thing was a long time ago now, seems like that never happened, though I will never forget descending flat out for 35 minutes behind his wheel the safest one to follow. My thoughts now turn to the rest of the MTB season, National Champs at the Olympic venue of Hadleigh farm in Essex in 2.5 weeks. I had the opportunity of riding this track a week before the Olympics, filming for the pre-race introduction video shown at the event. I also had my best result here in a National XC in 2013, came in 8th place, I wasn’t too well then either at that time There were many casualties that weekend, I crashed 3 times! Looking forward to visiting this place again, though I think it may have been tamed.

Otherwise, I’ve been racing a few criteriums, trying to get out of this 4th Cat. situation that prevents me from entering any decent road races, and I’ve finally done it. So I’m heading to the Staffs cycling festival this Saturday for the Women’s GP in Shugborough Hall. Just got to work on my sprinting, really haven’t done much top end stuff until recently and then there’s the actual skill of sprinting. I’m actually really enjoying these crits, hope to do more of the big ones next year.

Last weekend saw the annual Queen Victoria Cyclocross, a cross race around an outdoor history museum in Telford with the most brutal bike carry outside of the 3 Peaks. My cross bikes are still packed away and I was working overtime on Saturday so I grabbed the MTB and figured I’d keep it baggy too… Lots of catching up with folk too, including a colleague whom I hadn’t really met before, who kindly saved me with a can of pop and flapjack. (Not to mention Andy Whitehouse’s Dandelion & Burdock too…)

This weekend is The Scott MTB marathon at Church Stretton on Sunday, it was pretty hard last year, being only 4 months post-op from major surgery, this year should be better! In the meantime, I appear to have gained about 2kg since the cross season and been my heaviest in about 3 years, it really is time to sort that out.

Have a nice weekend.