Despite having a great grid position, amazing bike and equipment and what felt like pretty good legs leading up to it – my first race in the UK this year was a big woopie cushion. Sherwood Pines was the venue for the first British NPS of the year and the course where I took part in my first British NPS in 2007. The course this year was shorter, about 7.5km and we were going to be riding 7 laps. Due to the nature of the course, it was going to be tough. The course was almost completely flat with a huge amount of twisty single-track among the trees. An untechnical course but reasonably fun.
The race started and I felt to be going backwards from the start – I rode the singletrack well but the draggy fireroad sections I fell apart on. 30 minutes in, I felt crap and was ready to stop. I bit of a mechanical issue added to my headache. After another 30 minutes later, I was half way through and soldiered on. On this course, where group riding is imperative (speeds are high and drafting is paramount), I rode almost always by myself. It was one of those days, where, if I was training, I would call it quits early. I finished up after 56km in 2:23:45, over 9 minutes off the winner. Looking back, I have never had a good race on a flat course – guess I'll need to fix that some time soon. These things happen, my training has been going well and I'm looking forward to the next NPS round in Dalby Forest in 4 weeks.
Results are available here and Joolze has some pictures up here.
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