Mud, Glorious Mud, Broken Mechs and Brakes (Yorkshire Points Rd 5A Barnsley)

Its been a tough couple of weeks, training has not been as consistent as I had hoped, but the reason is simple, when I get home from work I want to spend as much time with my wife and daughter as I can, I am conscious that I wont get this time back and I don't want to look back at it and regret being on the turbo and missing out, this is all fine when i can cycle to work but at the moment there is a lot on in work and I am required to work out of offices in Sheffield quite a lot, this means that when I get home I am not able / willing to jump on the turbo, so I have lacked some consistency.

That said I had been looking forward to racing at Barnsley and with the recent bad weather it was looking like a mud bath, and it was not going to disappoint.

Getting there about an hour before the race it gave me plenty of time to get sorted out and look at the course, it was a tough one last year with peaty, claggy mud getting everywhere in the end making it very difficult to clip in let alone pedal, this year it was better, it was so wet that pickup was less of a problem generally but there is always a risk that you might lose a rear mech.

I started on row 3, gridding can be a bit odd sometimes I get called sometimes I dont, no idea why but I am generally pretty close to the front.  Claxon went and we were off, I was on the outside on the uphill drag to the first corner, I held my position well and as we joined the course proper I made up a handful of places and must have been comfortably in the top 20.

The first pass through some of the slippy stuff and the rider in front fell, I had no where to go and rode in / over his bike, although I managed to stay up it cost be a lot of time, frustrating after the start I had made but as I would say more than once, "thats racing".

Back on it and I started to pick off riders, given the easy week of training I was feeling pretty fresh, managing my effort on the climbs and powering down on the flats, as well as making use of by mountain bike skills on the descents to pick my way through.

A couple of laps in and I was starting to get into my stride, then, typically, on an off camber descent I ran out of grip (talent) and before I knew it I was rolling round in the mud... pretty much standard but i was uninjured and aside from a wonky left hood the bike was intact, I jumped up got back on and pressed forward again.

Two laps later I was approaching the same point, I was in a bit of a battle with another couple of riders and one of them decided to make a banzai move up the inside just before a small, slippy technical climb, he stopped I couldnt and it pulled my front brake apart, also the chap behind ran into the adjuster on my rear mech braking it off, so with limited gear and no front brake I decided to call it a day.... there is always next time. 

Another good turnout from York Cycleworks with Andy Johnson putting in a solid top 20 result, Matt Eastwood riding well until a rear mech failure and myself contesting the senior race and Wayne Nicholson smashing out a great 2nd place, Simon Wright and Mark McKie getting suitably dirty in the vets race.

 Wayne (Photo by Clare Crabtree)

 Mark (Photo by Clare Crabtree)

 Simon (Photo by Clare Crabtree)

Matt "Amatuer" Eastwood (Photo by Clare Crabtree) 

Andy (Photo by Clare Crabtree)

So I got my stuff together, and headed off home to spend the afternoon with the family.  

Next weekend is Rd6 in Sheffield, just need to get the bike fixed for then!

This week again, I am in Sheffield working most of the week, Rob has booked in some short 30min turbo sets which I will endeavor to do, but it's always going to be a challenge when I cannot do the work on the commute, still the TT season is a long way off and there is still time to improve before we get there.