Biketreks Racing Team at Clayton Vale Cyclocross - Photos courtesy of SportSunday.co.uk
The first cyclocross event of the season for the Biketreks Racing Team took place at Clayton Vale in Manchester on Saturday 1st of October, raced by Nic Bertrand and John Dodgin. The race organised by Velocity is part of the North-West Cyclocross Association's league series. The venue saw a good turnout of riders for the youth and senior races who braced themselves for unseasonally warm and sunny conditions - so much for cyclocross being a winter cyclesport!
The Clayton Vale circuit could be classed as 'not a traditional cyclocross course', with pretty much all singletrack and very little room for passing slower riders the start off the line was all important. Also mixed into this fun loop was gravel, steps, a sandpit and long finishing straight consisting of energy sapping soft wet ground.
A chaotic start to the race saw over 110 riders all jockeying for position into a strech of track no wider than 4-5 riders and an inevitable crash occured, with riders going down in front of them both Nic and John where delayed and spent the majority of the race chasing back through the field passing slower riders by using the limited parts of the course wide enough for overtaking. By the end of the race John had managed to work his way up to 19th position and was left wondering what he could have achieved if his start had gone better - something to work on for next week! Meanwhile Nic started to find a good rythm two laps into the race in the opressive heat finishing an eventual 43rd (Must do bettter!) - one lap down on race winner Giles Dake. (REPORT & FULL RESULTS)
Our Biketreks riders are looking to build on this through the coming weeks and months, after a successful road season the team are looking forward to using the discipline of cyclocross to keep having fun over the winter, give themselves high intensity workouts and improve bike handling for road racing next season.
Many thanks to Andy and the team at Biketreks as well as Specialized for their continued logistical and financial support for the team, the Biketreks riders look forward to racing on the excellent Specialized CruX cyclocross bikes throughout the season.
As we've come to expect at North West cyclocross races, there are also many superb photographs that capture the moment and the effort rather well courtesy of SportSunday photographers David and Laura:
- Seniors, Vets, Women and Juniors
