British Mountain Bike Series Round 1 - Sherwood Pines

It was an early start to the first Round of the National Mountain Bike Series, as I travelled up on the day and this meant I had to get up at 4am! However I had gone to bed earlier the night before to compensate for this, thus I had had plenty of sleep :D

When I arrived at the race venue (Sherwood Pines) it brought back memories of coming along with the family and watching my brother (Michael Butler) win National Races (that I would be doing that day). In this way I was keen to get a good warm up and be in best possible physical condition to get a good race for my Dad and Family.

As the organiser of the race was only allowing course practice between 9 and 9.30, I could not practice the course as my race was at 9.30 and there isn't enough time in between to be ready to race. An advantage of this is that I had arrived at about 8 o'clock and I raced at 9.30, this gave me a long time to get a good warm-up in before my race.

I had a good warm-up and felt very good when putting in my sprint efforts during the warm-up. As I went to the start line I was very nervous, and as I rode around with a few other riders (to keep the legs turning for as long as possible before the wait on the line), I found that I was far from the only one who was nervous.

I had a good start and was in about 19th (I think), after the first 50 metres, also the course featured a long start on a wide fire-track. In the fire-track I was able to push some big gears and put lots of effort in, because of this I pushed myself up to about 15th. On entering the first single-track I was in the same position, as the race was 3 laps, each lap was about 20 minutes.

Between the first and second lap I caught a few places by going all out on the fire-tracks and taking it smoothly through the single-track, because of this on the bell lap (last lap) I heard from the commentary, that I was in 12th! I really wanted to get that top ten spot, so on the last lap I caught another rider nearer the start of the lap and then I was behind the 10th place rider (Billy Harding).

This was a rider who I knew was predominantly a road and cross rider, thus hopefully they would not ride single-track as fast as I could. I followed his wheel for one fire-track section of the course and then just before entering the single-track, I made my move! I overtook him, in the hope that I would drop him in the single-track sections of the course, this worked and I gave it all the guts on the last two fire-tracks (to make sure he wasn't catching) and came into the arena with a very happy smile to take 10th place! :D

Once I had finished I went into the arena and waited for my Dad, but before this I shook the hands of a few riders that I have caught on the last half of the race, to share a bit a respect between us.

I was very happy with my race performance, and I was safe in the knowledge that as I was a first year under16, all the people that beat me, except one would be moving up next year, this meant next year with the same performance it may hopefully be podium time. Also with the huge field of Youth riders that raced (51 riders!!), I saw that a lot of the people that had beaten me all cross season, I had beaten today.

Lastly I would like to say thank to Martyn Salt (race organiser) for a fantastic race venue and course. Also thanks to my Dad, for driving up there for 4 hours at 4 o'clock in the morning!!

Thanks-for-reading 

Au-revoir!