I went the wrong way in a race again the other day, which is a bit weird. I saw the sign and the tape on the first lap but on the second I didn’t and came to a halt at bank of a large pond, turned around and rode back into the race where I left off and gave chase.

I also crashed (twice). Not massive spectacular crashes, just lame front-wheel-washout jobs that dumped me quite painfully on my elbow and thigh. One of them was onto some gravel and the other was onto some pointy rocks in a stream after I’d attempted to ride the ‘hero line’ into it on lap 1. So I got wet as well.

The first 20 minutes of the local midweek XC race were a bit of a disaster in fact.

Unusually for me in a short (1 hour) race, I decided that I’d just made the effort to finish work on time so that I could ride to the race from home, the trails were bone dry, the sun was shining and there would still be some hope of salvaging a half-decent result in the time remaining so put my head down (not too far down as I didn’t want to go the wrong way again) and hammered along in an attempt to overtake as many other people as possible. I spent the remaining 40 minutes doing that as best I could and arrived at the finish line after the final lap a near-crumpled wreck.

While riding home afterwards I received a text message from Shaun to tell me I’d won 15 quid as I’d got 8^th place in the ‘racer’ category. Which was a nice surprise. He said he’d put it under the till in the shop.

Which reminds me….

😉