Despite a weekend full to over flowing with racing opportunities, well over 200 riders made round three of the Midlands XC their option for offroading fun. Billed as the hilliest course of the series, Cannock more than lived up to it's reputation, with 200m of vertical climbing per lap crammed into a very compact 5.4km loop, though what goes up must come down and riders were rewarded with three massively fun downhills. Couple this with off camber rooty singletrack, plus soft loamy trails that had been soaked to within an inch of it's life and you had a tough course made tougher. One rider summed the course up perfectly likening it to an over watered grow bag!
Despite the tough going riders tackled it with gusto with the Sport and Veteran categories bursting at the seams with riders keen to get stuck in. With heavy rains battering many parts of the country it was a welcome relief to see the dark clouds replaced by blue skies and racing was conducted in uncharacteristic warm and dry conditions, though with conditions under tyre being so sodden competitors were soon emerging from their laps coated in ever increasing layers of mud.
Ride of the day had to be in the Elite race, where first year Junior Steve James, using the race as a build up to the upcoming World Championships, scorched round the six laps, leaving his nearest rivals virtually floundering in the mud. Chasing hard behind, was fellow first year junior Kenta Gallagher, along with Expert Scott Thwaites, local rider Martyn Brookes plus Oli Holmes, Rob Friel and Nigel Martin all keen to be in the mix, trying to get back on terms with the flying James.
As the race progressed, James relished the tough conditions soaking up the technical sections with gusto, romping up the climbs extending his lead as he went. The field behind was steadily disintegrating with Thwaites now in command of second whilst Gallagher played cat and mouse with Brookes. After 4 hard laps James started to fade, but kept pressing on and two laps later with Thwaites quickly gaining ground James took the win with his gap now down to 40seconds. Thwaites picked off second and Gallagher recovered pulling past Brookes in the closing stages to take third.
Earlier in the day the first race saw the Juniors in hot pursuit of the win over four massive laps. Relative newcomer to mountain biking Lewis Burke, relishing in his first year in the sport took to the muddy trails of Cannock like an old hand, leading from the start he kicked hard till the end taking the win ahead of Aron Marshall. Danielle Rider ploughing her own furrow over three laps took the junior women's race. In the youth boys race Matt Sumpton made sort work of the tricky course to come up trumps, while Bethany Crumpton would slide her way to the win in the Youth women's ahead of Hollie Bettles.
One of the biggest fields of the day was the Veteran men's race with 35 competitors keen to show that age is just a number. Marathon specialist Michael Powell took great delight in pounding round the short course, putting his recent good form to expert use taking a comfortable win ahead of John Smith.
In the Open race, British Cycling's Mountain Bike Editor Luke Webber - unable to race in the afternoons Expert category due to work commitments - took a narrow win on paper, but conceded the win to Jon Barnbrook. Australian Claire Aubrey took time out of her travels to compete in the Sport women's race. Despite not competing for at least seven months and not liking the many varieties of mud on offer, she took a comfortable win, sparking enthusiasm to get racing when she gets back home, happy in the knowledge that they don't do mud like Cannock back in Oz! Rachel Fenton took the Expert women's race with Amelia Cambridge racking up second.
With plenty of time to wash away the mud with mugs of tea and a post race massage or two, it was soon time to head for the hills and watch the riders in the afternoon's race get hot and dirty. In the masters race Phil Morris looked like a man on a mission, even with the heavy weight of a recent 24hr enduro race hanging in his legs. He blasted off quickly opening up a gap, which he maintained to the end taking the win, whilst behind Jon Bowie and Darren Alexander fought hard for the remaining podium spots, with just a handful of seconds Bowie snatched second.
Utilising his background of down hill racing, Darrell Upton fresh from a recent jaunt in the Alps took his leave of the rest of the competitors in the sports race and blasted his way impressively through the technical sections to take a comfortable win. While Giles Drake took control early on in the Expert race to take a win there.
By 5.00pm the racing had abated and all riders were home with tales of battles won and lost out on the trail over hot butties and mugs of tea. Thanks to the dulcet tones of Charlie Wigfall who kept everyone entertained and informed throughout the day as he commentated his way through all the races. Many thanks too, to Chase Trials for providing help on he run up to the event and with providing excellent marshals on the day. Thoughts now turn to R4 in Sherwood Pines, the series finale. With many categories wide open there is everything to play for. Join us on the September 20 to see who will be crowned the Midlands XC '09 series champions!
For more details please visit - www.xcracer.com
Riders Comments:
Michael Powell - Vets
That was really hard work out there; all the rain we had yesterday meant there was going to be a lot of mud. When I was warming up I was thinking it was going to be horrible, but when we started racing it actual flowed a lot better, which was a bit of a shock, a nice shock mind. There were a few sections that were still quicker to run. The roots made it interesting and there were a few sections I cocked up but I'm happy with how I performed out there overall I've improved my technical riding quite a lot this past year and on this course there was nothing too steep or scary, those are the things I don't like! It was a pity Geoff Giddings wasn't here to push me a bit more, I rode quite within myself, which is nice to be able to do, backing off before the climbs, but it was still hard work and I was still happy to cross that line and it was all over. It was good a well organized event as per usual by James and Nadine.
Lewis Burke - Junior
That was a tough race, I thought I'd go hard and see what would happen. I had a really good start and got a good lead straight away and got into my rhythm and just kept going. The course was really hard lots of steep climbing and technical descents, I'm only just getting used to the technical stuff as this is my first year of mtb racing, but I'm picking it up now and I'm really enjoying myself.
Claire Aubrey - Sports women race
That was fantastic, I'm from Australia and haven't raced for about 7 months, so it's great to get out there again! We don't have mud like this at home, there seems to be some many different kinds of mud out there, which is just insane. Once I got the hang of it though it was pretty good. Some of those sections were pretty tough and I found I could run some of them faster than I could ride them. I had a really good time out there today it was great and when we get back to Oz I can't wait to get back into racing once again.
Rachel Fenton - Expert Women
That was really fun despite it being so, so slippery and you couldn't control where you were going most of the time. I like riding along steep descents you just let go of the brakes and see where you end up. I was chuffed to actually ride that last section but made a hash of the exit and ended up in the ditch on the fire road! Unfortunately there weren't too many other women out there today and I ended up riding with Hollie Bettles, which was nice to have some company out there, and we tried to catapult her up the climbs as far as we could, which was great fun a really enjoyable event all told!
Ian Wright - Grand Vet
That was a real good tough course 4 laps was a little bit ambitious for us old uns. This is on the doorstep for me so if I can't do well here I may as well give up! It's nice to be back on the top step but it would have been good to have seen Roy (Hunt) here. There were a few good lads out there today but it's not the same for me without Roy these days. The course was excellent they did a great job sorting it out in all that rain we had yesterday. It was a bit boggy in places and the cross training came in very useful but it was great fun.
Phil Morris - Masters
Not quite so many hours for me this weekend compared to last week at Twentyfour/12. I didn't know how I was going to go today, I've had a bit of a cold all week and I've been recovering from whatever you get from doing 24hr races. However my legs felt really good today, my lungs didn't feel 100% and I was really pleased to get the result. It was a real toughie, a bit of a slog all the way round if I'm honest, there was no let up and I even had to get off at one point as the two guys ahead were walking faster than I could ride! So I got off and pushed which is really against my religion so to speak but today something had to give with all that mud!
Steve James - Elite
I've just started the build up to my training for the Worlds in September, I've a week in Manchester and then it's off to do the VTT Tour De France and this is just part of that build up really. I've done quite a lot of heavy training last week so I didn't feel that great coming into the race, my legs felt a bit dead, but once I got into it I kinda got into the zone and went for it. It was so muddy out there that if you got a gap on the first lap it would be really hard to close it down, hard to make any time back in the mud so I attacked pretty much straight away and got about a minutes gap and held that till about lap 4 and then started to fade a bit and I could see Scott starting to catch me. My race plan was to race as hard as I could for 90 mins which is about the length of a junior race, I achieved that and didn't ease off I kept digging but I knew I was fading, I didn't expect to hold onto the lead. I could see Scott catching me on the long fire road drag and that inspired me to drive harder and come in for the win. I put in an effort through the technical sections and managed to get a bit more time, so yeah pleased with that result. It's surprised me how much I've come on so much this year, I didn't think I'd achieve this much so soon, I wasn't planning really to achieve anything like this until next year, not bad for a first year junior and there's more to come!
Darrell Upton - Sports
Yeah it was a great course for me, just what I like muddy and technical. My fitness is no where near where it should be so I've been relying on my bike handling skills which came in really useful here. I guess though the week out in the Alps might have given me a bit more edge. It was fun but hard I had to grit my teeth and just get on with it, but it was worth it for the win.
Giles Drake - Expert Race
That was interesting, very hard, very slow, lots of running and just very tough. I got away at the start and just set my own pace and ride my own race. Luckily I got a good start and managed to get in the singletrack first and never looked back. It was a little disappointing that the numbers were a little low but very happy in the end. It was a good course it was tough and a shame the second half of the track was a bit runny so to speak but yeah a good race.
James Hampshire - Expert - Organiser.
I always feel when I put these events on that I should be taking part so I had a go at this one obviously I paid the price. Setting the event up takes an awful amount out of you. But it was a good race. The downhills were great fun, the climbs were tough but then we never sell this as an easy series.
It's a really good turn out considering all the other events that are on this weekend, good to see a lot of women in the sport and fun races this morning and good to see BC guys using the race for their training and yeah it was a good event.
