My club, MAD MTB, were the host club running the event in Corcaigh Park. My duties were putting together sandwiches for afterwards (7 loaves of bread!) and putting together a video of the race (which can be seen in this post).
Race winner - Connor McConveyAt 1pm we lined up and started – immediately Roger went to the front and attacked. A few groups formed from the start and I was silly not to be in the lead group (I was following wheels that I should not have been). Towards the end of the first lap I left my group moving after the lead group – a lap or two later, Roger fell off the lead group and we started riding together. We rode well together sharing the workload on a very windy course until with 3 laps to go he had a little trouble in one of the very muddy sections and a gap formed – at this point, I moved off in hunt for third position. On the final lap, with about 600 meters to go I passed Joe on the tarmac section but then things went horribly wrong – my bike skidded to a halt. Looking down, I found my rear derailleur (a beautiful 2010 Force one with about 14 hours of use) mangeled into my wheel. Nothing was moving. With Roger still behind me (somewhere), I picked up the bike, threw it over my shoulder and began to run – oh, I hated the running. I made it around the course to nip in just ahead of Roger with only a couple of seconds to spare.
With my 4th place result, I ended up finishing 2nd overall in the series – my first cyclocross series. I really enjoyed the racing – there was always 6-7 people that could make it onto the podium and that created a great race atmosphere, everything was up for grabs.
The damageMore pictures from Ollie.
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