Scottish Cyclocross Rnd 3 - Mugdock Park, Milingavie

Great report from Colin B, and well down finishing 13th!

It's wet, it's windy, it's muddy, it must be autumn! After a sun drenched opening round to the season and a damp 2nd round, the 3rd round of the Scottish Cyclocross season occurred in almost identical conditions to last year, with an overnight deluge and high winds turning the Mugdock Country Park course into a classic cyclocross event - muddy! The Mugdock race is organised by Glasgow Mountain Bike Club and has been on the calendar as long as I can remember. Again, it served up a good mix of woodland singletrack, open grassland and parkland trails and to spice things up, included some planks and a fallen tree to leap over, 3 running sections and 'suicide bridge,' an extremely slippery unguarded wooden bridge over a pond. Another record turnout saw 135 men, 6 women and 5 juniors take to the course for the Open event. Unlike the first 2 rounds I didn't make the mistake of being too far down the grid and managed to get a starting slot just behind the top 30 gridded riders. The organisers sensibly started us on an open park road in order to avoid a bottleneck in the woods which meant an pretty scetchy, fast start. Given the rain, the track was waterlogged and within 200 metres of the start, my glasses were pretty much rendered unusable due to the mud. However, this was not to stop me from giving it my all in the first couple of laps and with the good position wasn't held up too much in the beginning allowing me to get a good position. This was confirmed by Dawn who was marshalling and told me I was in 15th place which I was very happy with. It did, however, put me under a little bit of pressure as I've been after a top 20 place since I started racing last year. Maybe this isn't a bad thing as I certainly was determined to keep pushing and not lose any places. As the race wore on the course became muddier and muddier and as a result, a lot harder and with so many people on the course, passing lapped riders was a bit of a problem. I manged to avoid being taken out by crashing riders on 3 occasions an considered myself pretty lucky to avoid any spills. I did manage a full headbutt on a tree on the 3rd lap! Luckily I was uninjured.Driving on to the finish after an hours hard racing and I had been having a close battle with a couple of guys, one of whom had seemed to have got away from me and another who overtook me on the last lap. Into the finish area and they both seemed to accept the end of the race and didn't concentrate enough, letting me overtake and round the outside gaining 2 extra places on the line! 13th place in the Seniors, 16th in the Open race! Finally, some points!

Col B

P.S. Thanks to Dawn for all her encouragement. It's always good to have a few folk to cheer you on when the legs are starting to go a bit.