British Mountain Bike Series Round 3 - Wasing Park (12.06.11)

I raced the 3rd Round of the BMBRS Series on the 12th June, which felt like a very long gap from the last one at Dalby Forest. I was determined to have a good race at this round, after a disappointing 24th at Dalby Forest :-( This was because of a mix of bad form, chucking up b4 my race, and falling off. Also Wasing Park is my home round of the National Series and this made me very determined.

I arrived at the race and had a very good warm-up after not having alot of time to spare once I had arrived, to do a lap. However I had already raced there earlier in the season, so I wasn't that worried.

I had a quite bad start, after choosing to start in the middle ring and then move up to big after the start, however on changing, the chain jammed for a bit. Despite this I went up the long start road probably in about 15th-20th. I made my way through the riders after the bad start and managed to get to probably about top 15.

This is an old picture at the same venue and with much better weather!

After 1 lap, I managed to join a group of about 4 other riders, obviously with 3 laps to go, some riders made breaks and were caught back up etc, but on the 3rd lap when coming to the arena I made a break from the group (because I thought we had about 100 metres left of racing). At this point, I later learnt that I was in 9th! However it was not the last lap, and after basically stopping on the line, I suddenly realised I had made the stupid mistake of miss-counting my laps! We still had one lap to go!

By this time the group of riders had passed that I had broke from, and a rider we had dropped previously. This put me in 13th, instead of my planned 9th! I started the last lap feeling like a complete muppet and was very angry with myself, because of this I made a few mistakes and could not catch any places, I finished that lap very angry with my self and in 13th place! Despite the big mistake, that costed me 4 places, within 15 or so seconds, it was still alot better than 24th at the previous round.

Despite me being very angry, knowing I could have done alot better (3 or 4 places, within 15 seconds), In the end I finished 57 seconds of my original 9th place. Anyway, it was a good result and I need these experiences to teach me the very important lessons.

The next National Round is at Margham Park in 2 weeks time, where I am going to check how may laps I have 20+ times :-P

Lastly, sorry for the lap of pictures of the race, but I couldn't locate any collections of photos of me. there is till some there anyway, from other races.

Thanks-for-reading

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