Team MK Cyclo Cross 2012

Saturday 6th was a busy day on the LBRCC calender. After giving a marshals brief and spectating a few laps of the clubs own road race. I sloped off to Milton Keynes for round two in this years central league Cyclo cross races.
Thankfully Saturday was a gloriously sunny day, because I was still coughing my guts out and cold weather would have been the death of me. Though just to make things interesting the ground was still holding water from the weeks rain. When I arrived I met Jason and he immediately pointed to a spot on top of the hill and said 'they're calling it death corner' due to the amount of riders it was claiming.....interesting.
I got myself changed and set off for a recce, and found it nicely technical but not silly technical! Just as I was about to set off for another recce I bumped into Rob, we were a team of two again. We went around together to learn the points to dismount and where to change gear. That done we rolled over to the start only to find we were at the back again. It looked like we were going to finish where we started yet again.

It's all under control

The whistle went and we were off, only to stop seconds later due to a massive bottleneck at the first singletrack section that saw us both walking for what seemed an age. back on the bikes and we were off again. I was trailing Rob and had intended to do so the whole race, but that wasn't going to happen. As we swung into a tight hairpin into a climb the rider in front of me fell and took me down with him. Laying there clipped in pointing downhill I could see Rob riding into open ground.  Up again I set off trying to manage the gap between us, the only good news was that I got up before the rider that took me down and moved up a place. Lap after lap I could see Rob. Then on the penultimate lap a passing elite went by too quick and took out the barrier tape. The resulting flapping tape made a direct line for my chainset and as I stopped to untangle the mess I was overtaken and moved down a place. It was a bugger of a race for me. I pressed on happy to find I had made the bell lap, I didn't think I'd be that lucky and all I had to do was finish. I lapped three riders on the way to the flag, crossed the line and collapsed a coughing mess. Still not a terrible finish for an old man with a bad chest.