The Racing Post……shall we bring it back?

?
Well I’m off soon to RAF Halton for round four of my CX league.
Must say it’s bloody hard this year, higher quality field, numbers doubled. Last year I was top six each weekend, now it’s mid teens. Over 50’s not ‘blue Ribbon’ seniors BTW.
Starting to think 55 is borderline in cross.

Oh yes please….I keep getting podiums somehow 😀
Off to Otterspool for rd5 in half an hour.

Oh yes please….I keep getting podiums somehow

Oh cheers.

I don’t know how.I spent 4 years on the struggle bus grovelling in the twenty sommits.Now there’s 100+ every weekend and I’m on the front row 8O. Mick Style is 50+ and is top 3 and Roy Hunt is 60+ and is top 10 overall (in 40+)!!!!

I’m gridded front row each week (based on last years 6th overall) I think it might be that I didn’t race road this year.
Two weeks ago I was gridded front row with Masters World Champion, last week it was the Hargroves lot so the anti has well and truly been upped. Plus Saturday racing seems to bring the ringers after points both days?

Home. Tough crowd today, World Champ (again) Jewson and Hargroves guys, too rich for me.

Yea….2nd place.If I stop messing around at the start and get higher than about 30th after the first lap I might even actually win one 8)

Congrats.
Too much singletrack today and got caught up lapping back markers. It was pot luck…..but hey ho.

Too many years racing bmx/4x means I have very big elbows.

I’m too nice, and usually end up with 20M of marker tape round my gears.

Yea….2nd place.If I stop messing around at the start and get higher than about 30th after the first lap I might even actually win one

Congrats – just in from that race myself, first cx race I’ve done. Managed to avoid getting lapped by about 2 seconds.
Is that a typical course? Because I thought it was great, harder than I imagined- loads of tight turns that were tough to keep speed through.
Good vibe all round, our kid did the under 8s race and loved it – defo do another one.

Otterspool is fairly untypical for the NW.They are generally wider and less ‘singletracky’.I do really enjoy that style of course, being from the mtb side but it’s hard work to race on.I had to be a bit more ‘forceful’ with a couple of passes than I generally like to be because you just can’t afford to sit in on the narrower parts and wait too long for it to be convenient (it was definitely more fun in the mid pack-and better banter!!).
Hopefully I did’nt upset too many people.I always try to say thankyou/apologise.

First race back since breaking my collarbone in early August. More than happy with 5th place in the Seniors atNDCXL today but I’ve still got a lot of work to do.

I don’t know how.I spent 4 years on the struggle bus grovelling in the twenty sommits.Now there’s 100+ every weekend and I’m on the front row 8O. Mick Style is 50+ and is top 3 and Roy Hunt is 60+ and is top 10 overall (in 40+)!!!!

Roy Hunt still going!! respect! he was old when I was a kid haha

It’s funny how locals don’t like riders out of region turning up. Its not always point/pot hunting. Its just cos they like CX racing! Anyway I beat that there World Champ in the London League a few weeks ago (just), but he is about 62!!! Amazing fitness though! Pete Smith ain’t slow either.
Train a bit harder oldgit!

He has about 3 minutes a lap over me, Pete Smith is a cracking rider. I think they drag us round harder, as I said I’m down the field, but I’m totally spent afterwards.

Is he 62! ish? Christ.

2 minutes

Well at least you are keen! :0)

I am that, but just that sadly.
Raced National Vets Roads a year ago and realised that level was above me, happier now racing for honours. Missed road racing this year, can’t wait to get back.

Have we crossed paths.

Possibly. I did one or two CCCLs season before last. Hillingdon was one, always worth the long drive to race there.

Swedish national series round 5 today, a very nice 3rd place for me, backing up my 7th, and 8th from the previous rounds.

Even managed to pick up a pair of Racing Ralph 29er MTB tubulars as part of my prize! What a great excuse to buy new wheels, I mean it would be bad form not to try them…

Riding in 7th, biding my time

I should have a write up tomorrow. I’m having a play in the Wessex seniors this season. I was top 80% at Basingstoke before managing the heady heights of top 79% at Reading.
So my target of course is top 78% at Winchester 🙂

Well, I was hoping to spill out 3000 over-excited words about this running battle and that epic slide and how I proudly finished in my best spot of the season!
Instead, 3 letters is all it needs DNF 🙁

Broke my chain on lap two. Shame too as I felt good and the course was very MTB friendly. There were also lots of girly pansies in the mid-field of Seniors today tip-toing around the various slippery off camber banks so I was moving ‘up the ladder’ for once.

Hey ho, thats racing! On to Crowthorne 🙂

Hey ho, thats racing!

You almost wait for it to happen at least once a season, bummer isn’t it.

No racing this weekend, a good job to. Got to get my body ready for Saturday.

Annoyingly, I took my tool pouch off for a change ‘to save weight’ 🙁
I knew weight-weenieism was bad news 😀

Last road race of the season – our own TCC Ottershaw Surrey League. Not feeling great after a week of sniffs and general illness. Second lap; hit a big pothole, Third lap; team mate hits the big pothole (on my borrowed race bike 😕 ), Fourth lap rider two in front of me hits the pothole and sails over the bars into a somersault and the bushes. I drop off the back, call for a marshalla, don’t get back on, and spend the rest of the race standing in a three inch hole in the road marshalling riders. My race bike finished fifth and is very happy 😀 .

Imperial Winter Series starts on December 6th at Hillingdon. If you want to stay (relatively) clean, get your entries in now. 4th cats will fill up fast.

Imperial Winter Series starts on December 6th at Hillingdon.

Sod that 🙂

Oooh I only gone done and won one (bout time) 😀

I’d love to win a race again. Congrats.

After a week plus of illness I got straight into the MK Bowl CX race, it wasn’t pretty.

Friday, took a day’s holiday to spend it building the course for the weekend’s double header:

Saturday, Swedish national champs, 6th place in men’s 40 – 50 age group
Sunday, last round of the Swedish cup, 8th place in Super class.

Busted.

Next week is my season’s final race, which will be in Belgium, followed by watching the World Cup and Superprestige, as well as getting drunk celebrating my 40th. 8)

But we’re only half way through the season!

But we’re only half way through the season!

I know however its expected that there will be a thick layer of snow on the ground over here for the rest of the traditional season, hence why nationals was this weekend.

There are C2 events in Denmark once a month, so if the weather holds I might make it to one or two of those

I know it really doesn’t matter whether I finished 57th or 58th but it does annoy me how Wessex CX get the top ten and all the photos uploaded really quickly and then the full results several hours later. After all, we all pay the same entry fee. Perhaps it will get better when they upgrade to electronic timing?

Crosshair, compared to LL that’s good, and we have electronic timing!

They need to sort the prizewinners out on the day so that’s why the first few are known, the rest get done when they get done. You’re talking about volunteers who’ve given up their weekend for you, remember.

Lol! Alright, I know they are volunteers and I’m not denying the great work they do. Thing is though, Gorricks are only a few quid dearer and they will tell you your result as soon as you’ve finished and get them online before you’ve had a bath.
Given the responses the other entry fee thread got, I’m probably on dangerous ground here but I’d happily pay £20 entry fee every week to make sure they a) have electronic timing and b) pay someone to do the administration on the day. If wessex CX controlled the entries centrally rather than the clubs then you could make the whole day so less stressful- you could bulk enter for example or even enter next weeks at this weeks event etc. seems really inefficient for each club to handle the entries separately.
Sparsholt entry was fast, efficient and in a nice canteen. Today, we queued in the mud for twenty minutes after the time they had quoted for senior entries. The guy was only just clipping safety pins onto the numbers (why not trust us to take four ourselves and free another pair of hands up for entries?)
Course was epic mind you 🙂

Pre-entry only meets resistance as CX has traditionally been entry on the day, going away from that is a big step. I do pre-race admin for a much bigger league than Wessex and if I were to be paid my hourly rate I can assure you that entry fees would be a lot higher than £20 🙂

There’s no need to stop entry on the day but if 75% of the queue suddenly vanished then your workload and price tag would come down accordingly 😀
Just £2 extra an entry would be £5600 a season roughly for the Wessex league- I’m sure you could get one of the existing volunteers to run a centralised entry/numbering system for that. Hell, if I was retired, I’d happily do it.
I understand that it’s supposed to be affordable, un-grandiose, grass roots racing, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be stuck in the mud 😀

The queue will still be there, riders still have to present licence, sign on, pick up number and chip etc. You can’t get rid of the numbers and manual judging backup.
It’s being looked at all over the country but until BC bring in something centralised it’ll all be ad-hoc. What you’re asking for would be ideal but it’s a long way off. It makes everything downstream easier too as with known entries the organiser can plan budgets/prizes/levies in advance as well.

Easiest way to show us how it’s meant to be done is organise a race crosshair.