Hi everyone.

The weekend before last I travelled to Fort William in Scotland to do round five in the SXC series. I travelled up on the Saturday morning with my Dad and Ali tagged along as well. Neither me or Ali had ridden at Fort William before, so we were both looking forward to riding the course. We arrived in the evening and met up with Dave and Alex to pre ride the course. Alex and Dave weren’t sure where to go because it was a different course to the year before so we rode round with an elite rider called Andrew who knew where to go. Even though we had a guide, Dave still managed to get lost. We waited for him at the place where we thought he’d gone wrong, but then carried on because he was nowhere to be seen.

The course started with a long, steep climb, followed by rocky descents. After that, there was another long climb with a couple of tight switchbacks in it. The descent after this was more natural and I enjoyed it more than the rocky one. At the bottom of this, there was a really steep rocky chute round a right hand bend which was nicknamed “Nessie” by the locals. It had netting up on the left hand side to stop people falling off the edge down the steep drop. I rode it, with Ali on my wheel, and halfway down I wished I’d gone in a bit slower. The wheels were bouncing all over and luckily they ended up pointing in the right direction to go round the corner. I decided to run it in the race because I thought the risk of crashing was bigger than the amount of time you could gain from riding it. After that, there was a really long drag back to the finish, with a few technical bits of singletrack. We got back to the car and it was ages before Dave got back - he’d gone miles out of the way!

The next day, we arrived at the course early enough to get sorted and have a decent warm up. By the time of the race, it was getting quite hot which made the already demanding course slightly more tiring. I went off the start line at a pace I knew I could hold for the whole four laps. It meant I lost time on everybody else, but it was the fastest I could go. I wasn’t feeling too good on the second lap, but after that I was feeling a lot better, and caught up the rider in front of me. Just as I was next to him, he pulled to the side of the track. I think he pulled a muscle although I didn’t see him at the end of the race so I’m not sure. I ended up finishing 6th, which I wasn’t too pleased about. However, I was pleased with the fact that that race was the first race where I haven’t completely ran out of energy on the last lap, so I’m definitely getting the stamina. Also, my lap times were consistent, so I was pleased with that as well. I’m training a lot more now because it is the summer holidays and I was easily coping with my training a few weeks ago. Hopefully I’ll be able to pick up a bit of form in time with the next race at Eastridge in a couple of weeks time. Also, because I’m putting quite a few hours in now, I should be going well for the cyclocross season.

Ali is writing a blog about his race, so I’ll leave him to tell you about that and I’ll post it as soon as I get it.

See you Saturday,
Joe.