Good ride Will, when you came by on lap 3 I was in such a hole that I could only just watch you ride away. Pleased that I dug myself out to come from 12th to 6th in the last 2 laps.
Despite first appearances, the course was great – nice to have some proper mud too!

Yeah, it’s 105 miles each way from home, so in 2 minds about it as well. I think a lot of people are in the same boat – turnout might be pretty low.

Good as in quite fast and the corners seemed to ride well. Certainly for what they had on offer it was good.

Well yeah, was meant to be racing.

Never have Rapha got it so wrong (i’m a big Rapha fan btw) but 3 hour delay, little communication and then cancelling the event! I’m glad i only had a 5 mile ride to get there.

So in short, no cross racing this weekend.

The Supercross event Rapha ran had to be cancelled due to the Rain and Wind and more importantly the slippy conditions.
You have to remember this event was an Urban Cross style event in that it was run through the grounds of St Martins collage. The pavements were all flagstones and pavement as you’d expect from an urban event.
The Kids races went ahead, 2 rounds of the Adults races went ahead. It was clear from the conditions and subsequently sheer amount of crashes into barriers at corners and through the doorways that this became too risky to continue on with.

I agree that the event cancellation should have been wider publicised but most or all of the event racers were already on site and understood the conditions only too well. Most wanted to drop out of the races and it became clear to run the event in the afternoon/evening was too risky. One poor lad bust his collarbone on a corner, not unusual in cross event, but when it’s on flagstones it becomes a different issue.

As is the location was an excellent choice, great surroundings and most of the attendees agreed the format was first rate, the conditions took over though.

There were issues with college students bemoaning facts around being unable to get into/out of their college quick enough. Having to queue to cross the course was inevitable but not really liked by students.

There is talk already of a Nocturne type of event, possible a linkup with them but the plan is to run a similar event of Urban Cross again next year.

Shame the conditions were rubbish, but hey..

I agree Will, they tried another format. If that had worked it’d been brilliant.

Totally agree with the lack of communication though. We still had some folks turn up for the Elites to watch despite torrential downpouring.

Did you end up in the Tent with us lot??

Just seen the photos from round 8 at the central league in Kettering. Woah, that looked awesome. Even more gutted I didn’t go now.

BB – I ended up near the Bar, that was free for a few hours, just chatting to some mates until I got too cold…

Agree – as soon as we got there on Saturday we realised that it wasn’t happening. Anyway…..

Mud fest in the London League at Sumners Ponds today. Good fun but bloody hard work. Loads of broken mechs & riders at the side of the track cursing their bikes. Excellent organisation from Velo Bagarreur.

Absolute mudfest at Penrith today, whole course brown and slidey, good to get back to a race though

Last 3 races I’ve done have been mud baths. In the absence of 2 bikes and a pit crew I’ve been considering a SSCX. But I haven’t seen many. Struggled towards the end of most races especially when there are long dismounted sections and my bike is getting heavy.

Still cheapish light SS options with discs though. Best I can see is the Arkose. Everything else is niche steel.

Trick to avoiding a rear mech catastrophe is to always pedal forward even if you are just turning slowly. Under no circumstances pedal backwards – hard when your pedals are set up wrong for a remount.

I’m on a SS disc Singular Kite – don’t think I’ve ever raced with gears. Still cleaned 5lbs of mud from it yesterday.

Proper winter cross race! Course was shoveled, mostly, so as long as you stayed in the 12″ wide track you were OK. Plenty of wet rocks, roots and greasy mud to throw you off it, though! Really fun. The only lap I didn’t enjoy was my fastest. There’s a lesson there, I think…

Finland, about 30km SE of Tampere.

garry lager – the latter, after the leaders have done a lap or two they work out how many they will complete in an hour and countdown from that. It get very confusing, youll be lapped by some not all and sometimes you are convinced you’ve been cheated out of positions but it only really happens very very rarely. Main thing is if its a long lap it can make a difference to how long you race, just get lapped at the wrong time your bell lap before the winner and you be out there for nearly 1h10

Does your league have timing chips? that really helps.

Timing thing these kerazy Finns are using is Webscorer PRO 2.1. Numbers on an ipad, touch the racers’ numbers as they come over the start/finish. Going to get unwieldy at some point, but it works well up the 60 or so they’ve had along to some of these races.

Then they lie to you about only having one more lap, and tell you to go round for another one after that.

Garry – it wasn’t too cold, certainly once you were moving. Had numb hands for the first lap, stacked on the 3rd, and didn’t bother putting my gloves back on again once I’d sorted out my brakes. And pretty dry – I was expecting to be wet through and caked in mud, but I didn’t even really have a wet arse, really. Combination of just sub-zero temps and sandy soil. And not going fast enough, probably!

Don’t know if this will work:

@Garry, Stadt Moers? I was in the same position – 4 laps @ 37:30ish, I thought I had another lap but that’s how it falls sometimes. I was counting laps for the other races and the total number of laps was being estimated by the chief commissaire after the 1st 2 laps, although there are timing chips he was using his stopwatch.

Yes, best course so far this year imo, small changes from last really improved it.

When I Comm I usually try and bring every race in just below the time stated in the programme. This is a for a number of reasons:
– there’s a programme of races, if it starts to drift out then its hard to get the overall event finished on time
– there’s usually a wide variety of abilities – if you bring in the leader just over time then the last people to finish may be 15 minutes or so later (That’s why we sometimes pull people near the end if they’re almost but not quite about to be lapped)
– even though most leagues have chip timing it’s just as easy to use a stopwatch, at least you don’t run the chance of putting off the lap counters and spoiling all the results. Mine shows the last 3 lap times anyway so you can see how its going
– Sometimes the conditions worsen during the race – if the leaders start to drop off on their lap times then you sometimes need to reconsider and shorten the race a bit
I must admit that finishing at 37:30 does sound short – was it supposed to be a 40 minute race? Because that would seem about right.
Vets race is pencilled in for 45 mins, I think, and the winner came in at 36.06.
Prob down to your first point – I think we were quite late starting, like 30 mins plus behind schedule, so maybe they needed to cap it off to get the next race done.

No Monday morning updates?

Welsh League unfortunately had to be cancelled this weekend. The course is right next to the sea, exposed to the full force of the westerly gales. Given how rough the weather got in Cardiff on Sunday, I think the organisers made the right call.

Not racing did give me a chance to finally get my blog about CX racing up to date for the season though:

I’m not dead yet

Lincolnshire league went ahead, it was seriously windy, with the course pegged to the floor rather than fluttering a few feet above it. It was a day that saw the sunny riders absent and the true muddy crossmen ride. I had decided to pop another tooth on my gearing as my current chainring was seriously worn, so went from 33:17 to 34:17 which doesn’t sound alot but it was definitely plenty big enough give the rain and the boggy conditions. Definitely finding my shorter race distance legs after a summer of 24hrs and 12hrs events on a fat bike. Looking forward to getting my tubs stuck on my new wheels, never raced tubs so that’s my weeks job along with a few more turbo sessions.