National Championships
Moelfre Hall, Oswestry: 15-16 July 06
By Ben Thomas.
The same four Mountain Trax team members attended the National Champs as had journeyed up to Scotland the week before. For these riders the three and a half hour trek to Moelfre Hall near Oswestry didn't seem so bad. Calum, Dean, Paul Hopkins and I were the only riders to make those journeys. Large expectations had been gathering about the National Champs since it was announced that the XC would take place at the same venue as the Downhill, 4X and Trials championship during the same weekend.
However just 15 minutes away from the venue we receive a call from Chris back at the shop to say the event has been cancelled. Dean played along with Chris' joke saying it could be as we hadn't seen any bikes yet. However Chris then told us that Calum had already pre-ridden the course and was now on his way home back down south! I quickly rang Calum to find out what happened but there was no signal on his phone. 10 minutes later I managed to get hold of him to the news that he's already back in Newbury. Calum's weekend of racing was already over and it was only Friday.
On arriving Dean and I were followed within the next 10 minutes by Paul Hopkins and good friend of the team Andy Parsons. Dean had hurt his knee the previous weekend at Drumlanrig and wasn't sure if he would be able to ride after still feeling the pain on the Thursday while on his road bike. While we got changed Dean quickly rode his bike up and down the car park but quickly realized his knee was still causing too much pain and therefore his weekend of racing was also already over!
The beginning of the course was through the trade area, it then hit the hill as you turned left into a newly mowed section through a field. The course then crossed over a dried out stream and led you into a tight, steep, rooty and rocky section that required you to do a 180 degree turn on stones onto a fireroad. The course followed the stony and sandy fireroad all the way to the top of the hill. By the time the course reached the top of the hill you had been climbing for over a mile. It then quickly started to go down including some steep off camber sections, very tight corners and a mixture of sand and rock sections to catch riders out. The course then reached the bottom of the hill as the course curved around the camp site through some small singletrack sections. The course was just 2.5 miles long!!!
After riding the course we quickly understood why Calum had already left for home. Clearly not much work had been done to prepare the course; all it did was climb the road that the uplift tractors used and then followed last year's now redundant downhill course. Although the downhill sections were great fun the uphill fireroad wasn't and it would have been much better if they could have at least split it up or built some singletrack climbing sections. However this was only a minor problem compared to the fact that there were no marshals anywhere in sight, there were no warning signs and there was a distinct lack of tape in many sections including on the downhill.
On arriving on Saturday we had to wait for the event organisers to decide what time the races would be as this was only a last minute consideration. Several other riders decided to leave and there was even a discussion of sitting down on the start line to delay the start of the race.
However Paul Hopkins was determined to do well and nothing seemed to distract him from his main priority. He was racing in the Master's category and was doing the normal 4 laps of the course. On the gun Paul made a steady start but it wasn't the best for someone who had a good chance of winning the event; as he came around he shook his head in disbelief. However he did look extremely strong on the uphill sections with a solid tempo. Paul dropped to 7th place by the 3rd lap but eventually on the last lap he put the power down. However the gap to the leaders was too big and by the end he had made it up to a well-earned 4th position.
By Sunday I had blocked out the distractions caused by the lack of professionalism from the event organisers. However more let downs were to follow including being told that the Junior race would have to do an extra 2 laps taking the number of laps to 5 and more than the Master category. The race was delayed by half an hour as we waited for the downhill course to be cleared as it crossed over the cross country course. Unfortunately though I struggled from the start due to the temperature, which was extremely hot and during the race it reached 97 degrees Fahrenheit. I managed the original 3 laps and then pulled out so I could go and lay down in the shade to cool down.
The event was a disappointing one in terms of the team's results but despite this and the problems with the events organisation I believe that the majority of the riders who stayed did enjoy themselves.
The next race is on the 30th of July and is the Southern XC round 4. Good luck to the team at Bordon. The next race after this and my next race will be the National Points Series round 4 at Newnham Park near Plymouth on the 5th of August.