British Mountain Bike XC & Trek Marathon, Round 1
Thetford: 7-8/04/07
By Calum Chamberlain
The long awaited nationals are upon us: the first big test of the year for all our riders and a nice start to the season with the usual quality of Martyn and the rest's handiwork providing us with a fast; flowing course with which to stretch our legs on.
From the off, it was intense sprinting through two 90 degree right handers followed by a sharp left into the first singletrack, by which time most races had already formed into tightly packed trains which indicated how the race would pan out from here on in. The singletrack was a breeze to ride, all flowing brilliantly, with rolling lumps and deep berms through which you could carry your big-ring-no-brakes speed. This was joined by short blasts of firetrack where you could grab an opportunity to drink or grab places. As it was Thetford there are no real climbs, but there was one long (relatively) drag up towards the arena which provided the stage for quite a few moves throughout the races.
Onto the racing...
I was the first rider off in race one with my first race in the Junior category. I was aiming to place top 10 as this is my aim for this season, looking to push on next year for a place in expert (fingers crossed). As my training has been going well for me, albeit interrupted recently by 2 weeks of colds and subsequent recovery, a weeks riding in the Peaks prior to the race primed my fitness back to race level and as such I was feeling fairly strong.
Unfortunately as it was my first Junior race I didn't get gridded and ended up getting a poor start and not getting into the lead train as I would have hoped, so I spent all of the first lap battling to try and get in contact and was riding alone in no-mans land between groups. On the second lap I decided to let myself get caught by the chasing group and see if I could get them to ride harder up to the leaders. Unfortunately I ended up on the front of that group most of the time as I was the only one willing to push the pace, so on the third lap I broke from them and made another bid for the leaders. However by this time I was too far off the pace and never stood a real chance; finishing 8th for my efforts, a decent result which I was pleased with.
Next off, in race two where our Sport contingent took up station behind the Elite women in their skin-suits. This race saw seasoned riders Warren and Chris doing battle with the younger and more inexperienced Ben (not that that proved to be a bad thing). From the Gorricks in the build up to the season it was a safe bet to place Ben ahead of Warren and Chris, with Warren quite close to Ben. Although Chris did have the weight advantage with his newly built Yeti ASRslc weighing in under 23lbs.
Warren leads the Sport charge [ Photo courtesy of: John Newport ]
Warren started off near if not on the front row of the grid as he had a strong season last year, whereas Ben and Chris were placed further back in the field leaving them with all the work to do.
From the gun it was manic, as with all the races, as everyone rushed to get a decent bit of trail for the first singletrack and a good position in with the fast trains. Fortunately our riders appeared to get away without incident and proceeded to fly through the feed station where Dean was taking care of the bottle hurling (and some riders were well and truly hurling their bottles at carriers to show their disgust; not the best way, next time they may end up with something much worse than someone else's bottle).
Ben was first to emerge who was closely followed by Warren. Both were holding their own in the fast paced racing around Thetford although the same could not be said for Chris whose first lap was a good 5 minutes off the pace of Ben and continued to drop of the pace throughout the race even though he felt strong, a range of work commitments (we're moving if you didn't know! Its happening during May, opening at the new place for 1st June all being well) have caused him to miss a few sessions.
However, Ben and Warren remained strong, with Bens pace very consistent throughout the whole race and Warren managing a negative split last lap to pull him up to 19th with Ben nabbing himself 6th and Chris 66th.
The last race of interest for the team was in the Grand Veterans, Veterans and Master categories. I can't quite remember who was off first so I'll just dive in (too much college work taking its toll) with Clive and John in Grand Vets first (oldest first, seems only fair). So, Clive got off to a solid start with his Mountain-Trax career, pulling out a 9th with consistent laps and a generally solid performance. He was followed by John who had a strong first lap but seemed to fade on his second to hold it together for the last, really enjoying riding the Scott Spark (demo at the shop and very worth a go if you are thinking of a quality full suspension bike).
In age order, the Veterans and Dean who having done his usual bit of complaining about Thetford ('flatford'); Dean being a man who likes his granny-ring bashing and proper hills, still managed to pull out a decent 21st on his new Spark.
It wasn't raining, maybe the sun was too fierce! [ Photo courtesy of: John Newport ]
We had 3 masters racing, with Hoppy riding hard and fast, with scorching lap times that would have had most of the rest of the team left eating his dust; as most of the Masters field did when he finished 9th overall. He was followed by the other Paul who rode a very strong race, but probably suffered from incorrect drinking as my rubbish bottle-wielding failed to get him bottles on 2 occasions. Despite this he still finished 39th in Masters. Finally (last but not least) Lorraine was off in the Masters Women category who with a very solid ride on a course she loves and knows all too well from long nights spent churning through the miles in D2D, finished 8th.
That rounds out the cross-country on Saturday, and because I have dragged on so much with that, I will be very brief about Sundays riding. Suffice it to say that there was yet more quality singletrack added to the course for the deserving who hung around all weekend (namely Warren, Paul Howard, Lorraine and myself). Thetford treated us all to a good Easter Sunday with all riders enjoying the course and gaining good results which were as follows: Warren; 30th 50km, Paul Howard; 28th 100km, Lorraine; 8th 100km, and Calum; 14th 50km.
All in all, I have written far too much, but any excuse to get out of homework… However it was a brilliant weekend, and all riders have things on which they can improve (myself included) and basically; bring on Sherwood Pines!
XC Results
Pos Laps Time Time+ Name Lap 1 Lap 2 Lap 3 Lap 4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- JUNIOR 8 4 01:35:41 03:21 CALUM CHAMBERLAIN 23:22 23:56 24:05 24:18 SPORT 6 4 01:38:05 04:07 BEN THOMAS 23:43 24:31 24:57 24:54 19 4 01:41:40 07:42 WARREN BATES 24:05 25:33 26:15 25:47 66 4 02:10:25 36:27 CHRIS WHITE 28:06 29:33 32:29 40:17 GRAND VETERAN 9 3 01:20:22 08:01 CLIVE ELY 26:00 27:03 27:19 14 3 01:26:27 14:06 JOHN NEWPORT 27:31 29:16 29:40 MASTER 7 5 01:59:41 04:21 PAUL HOPKINS 22:34 23:10 23:45 24:58 25:14 39 5 02:11:26 16:06 PAUL HOWARD 25:10 25:38 26:47 26:04 27:47 MASTER WOMEN 8 3 01:28:07 06:01 LORRAINE STALEY 28:35 29:30 30:02 VETERAN 21 4 01:41:10 07:08 DEAN MORGAN 24:05 24:59 25:40 26:26
Trek Marathon Results
Pos Laps Time Time+ Name Lap 1 Lap 2 Lap 3 Lap 4 Lap 5 Lap 6 Lap 7 Lap 8 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 50k ENDURO MEN 14 4 02:06:35 11:40 CALUM CHAMBERLAIN 32:33 30:39 31:37 31:46 30 4 02:15:05 20:10 WARREN BATES 34:10 33:45 33:40 33:30 100k MEN 28 8 04:35:18 40:13 PAUL HOWARD 33:04 33:09 34:15 33:52 37:02 35:07 34:32 34:17 100k WOMEN 8 8 05:39:28 1:13:36 LORRAINE STALEY 38:13 39:01 51:25 40:34 40:46 44:51 42:36 42:02