Southern XC Round 2 - Slip Sliding Around
Deers Leap Park, East Grinstead: 27/05/07
By Clive Ely
Five of the team got up on Sunday morning and made the somewhat wet journey to Deers Leap Country Park, for the second round of this years Southern XC. We had all resigned ourselves to a mudfest, and equipped our various steeds with skinny mud tyres. Paul Howard and myself opted for the 'one gear suits all' singlespeed option expecting the thick mud and grass leaving those with a choice of ratios at the beginning of the race none by mid way through the second or third laps - which was indeed the case.
For those who have not raced at Deers Leap the course consists of field perimeters interspersed with short technical descents into and out of wooded valleys, aided in two sections by boardwalks thankfully covered with chicken wire (although the wire being only 300mm wide it did test the nerve and confidence somewhat!). All of these wooded sections would have been a blast in the dry - add greasy, thick mud onto copious amounts of polished roots and stones and they became technically challenging. As Dean said afterwards - "mud can be a great leveller!"
So to the racing: Dean (Vets) and myself (Grand Vets) were off in the second batch of races at starting at 12.30. Early rain had certainly soaked the ground, but it actually eased off for most of the race and made the mud stickier, which combined with the long grass stayed well and truly wedged around the chainstay/bottom bracket area. Dean bagged a 6th by the finish - with which he was well pleased. I came in 4th having enjoyed the challenge greatly, and for once having the technical ability to stay with and indeed pass a couple of my usual rivals (well at least until we got onto the field edges).
By the time the two Paul's were due to race (Super Masters) the rain had returned and the mud became much wetter - the organisers reduced this batch of races by a lap in each class. Hoppy was obviously intent on making the long journey over from Wiltshire worthwhile, and powered through to finish a strong second behind Jamie Newall. Paul by his own admission was in enduro mode (helped I am sure by a late night on Saturday) and came in comfortably in 8th - still a good 5 minutes faster than my 3 lap finishing time.
Ben, selfless to the end, decided to forego a ride and was bottle boy for the afternoon!! So there we have it, we all bagged some valuable points for this series, honed our bike handling skills (and mud cleaning ability) - let's hope the next round in the New Forest has conditions like last year - hot and very dusty.
Pos Laps Time Time+ Name Lap 1 Lap 2 Lap 3 ------------------------------------------------------------------ VETERAN 6 3 01:22:34 08:00 DEAN MORGAN 26:43 27:28 28:23 GRAND VETERAN 4 3 01:29:51 08:12 CLIVE ELY 29:10 30:17 30:24 SUPERMASTER 2 3 01:15:50 01:21 PAUL HOPKINS 24:47 25:35 25:28 8 3 01:24:35 10:06 PAUL HOWARD 27:38 28:45 28:12