I was pretty excited to kick the cyclocross season off at my local venue, Hikoikoi. I didn’t know where my form would be having just got over a stinker of a cold that I picked up in Alaska while travelling for work.
I really like the Hikoikoi course: it is usually a good fast course with enough interesting corners to keep you on your toes. The course starts on the grass before wiggling down to the beach with an out and back over beach gravel. There is the option of a run up some steps, and/or riding up and down the bank. This year it was dry enough to include the wooden steps. More wiggling on the grass leads around to an off-camber section near the sea-scout hall and some more enforced running.
This year was a particularly dry year, with most riders finishing with clean bikes. Last year at Hikoikoi I punctured on a slab of tarmac on the track down to the beach, so I made sure during practice to work out my line there to avoid that square edge. Other than that the course was relatively un-technical and it was mostly about trying to find the limit of grip for all the corners and kicking hard to get back up to speed which I really enjoyed.
I came into this race wanting to see what I could do and I wanted to give myself the best chance of winning. With that in mind I had a good warm up and lined up early on the front row. From the gun Hisky kicked away and took the holeshot. I got in to second wheel and was happy to follow him knowing that he likes to start hard. I managed to get around him at some point early in the first lap and kept applying the pressure.
I was trying to kick hard out of every turn to accelerate away from the field, but got carried away and was sometimes kicking then slamming on the brakes immediately for the next corner. I learnt through the race which corners were worth kicking out of and which ones I could just hold my speed through.
For the first few laps I was followed fairly closely by a rider that I didn’t know, but turned out to be Bryan Crump. I made a mistake on lap two or three when I went too hot into the off-camber banking and slid out, sliding for about 5 metres before coming to a stop at the bottom of the bank. Thankfully I was able to pick myself back up quickly and didn’t lose too much time. I think Bryan probably had an issue that lap as well as he swapped places with Caleb Botcher.
At the start when I saw Caleb Botcher was at the race I felt relieved: suddenly I felt like the pressure that I had put on myself was gone as I did not expect to beat Caleb. Caleb has beaten me by fairly large margins on the mountain bike this year and I was expecting that he would ride away from the field. When I realised that I was ahead of him, and staying ahead on lap 3 I was surprised, but confident that I could keep on doing what I was doing.
For the rest of the race I tried to ride consistently: kicking out of the turns that were worth kicking out of and holding my speed through as many corners as I could. I still made some mistakes, and I’m sure there was more time to be had on the course, but I think I rode fairly well for the first race of the season. In the end I came home for the win, just under 2 minutes in front of Caleb.
That was a pretty nice start to the cross season.
Banner photo: Working Technology (Don Johnson)