No sooner has ‘cross finished that mountain biking racing starts (does it actually ever stop?) at Gorrick. Kids like mountain biking but it’s much more a fun thing than cyclocross.
We’ve never been to Gorrick before, only ever doing the Southern XC races last year, the last of which Phoebe broke her leg at. There are only 2 Gorrick Spring races, this one at Crowthourne being the first. Sutton had a great turnout of riders, with around 10 riders across the categories.
We seemed to one of the first ones to arrive and rather than standing around I told the kids to keep warm, riding up and down the road. They actually just vanished into the woods, only to turn up 40 mins later having done the lap. Never been so worried.
The start line was quite honestly a mess. No organisation and the front row was full of under 13 boys. Everyone was hanging around while the stragglers returned from a sighting lap and they were then sent off by category, in 1 min intervals. However, the confusing meant that unknown to us, one of the girls in the Juvenile cat had gone with the boys, this is Phoebe’s group. So she thought that she was racing against one other girl.
Zoe was in the U13 and was the penultimate group to start. They all got off well and no problems. Now to wander through the woods, to a point where you can see them for 10 seconds, the walk along to another bit for another 5 seconds. This isn’t cyclocross.
While hanging around one of the parents told me about the girl that had gone early with the wrong group. Tried to tell Phoebe when I saw her but it was hard for her to understand when she is flying through the woods and needs to concentrate. Second lap she had a fall and bashed her elbow but was ok.
Zoe emerged as the first girl on her shorter lap and continued to ride well to the very end. She seemed to really enjoy it, even though she also had a fall and a run in with a parent who wouldn’t move out the way, which was a bit naughty.
Anyway, Zoe won her race and the proceeded to do wheelies and track stands around the start line until her sister turned up after her two laps.
Phoebe can focus really well when riding to the point you can’t actually communicate with her. I told her what had happened and was a bit annoyed about the other girl going off with the boys as she thought there were only two of them racing. The race organiser said the other girl had won because her times were better. But then she was at an advantage of knowing she was in the race, who the other girls were and riding much of the course with the boys. She may well have beaten Phoebe had they gone off at the same time but she feels a bit cheated not knowing the girl was racing. While I appreciate the race organisers are don’t get paid, entry fees are not cheap. So they could sort out the start to ensure that these things don’t happen.
Overall a fun day. The kids really enjoyed the course, the challenge and didn’t mind getting up at 5:40am so we could get to the venue in time.
Next race in Mud, Sweat and Gears at Hadleigh. That will be a much harder race for both girls, don’t expect podiums there but it will be a great experience to ride the Olympic venue and see bigger fields in the girls races.
Karl Roche 
Leave a comment