My first proper crash

I used to hate mountain biking, I would ride down the hills at a snails pace usually screaming my head off. I didn’t enjoy it and therefore I haven’t been off road for about 2 years. Then a few weeks ago, a friend of mine told me about Rapha supercross in Huddersfield. At the time I thought, “Oh that sounds good, I might give it a go”. I was ready to let go of my off road demons.

So the day of my first cross race drew ever nearer and I realised I was actually going to have to do it. I hadn’t trained off road, I had never ridden a cross bike before. I was going to do it on my sister’s mountain bike until I was offered a cross bike by Cheryl King, a very lovely photographer. I thought I would have a better chance on a cross bike seen as I am more used to riding my road bike than anything else. I lasted about 15 minutes before I got frustrated and my chain came off and I abandoned.

After the frustration had settled down I started to feel annoyed with myself for giving up so easily. There was a race the next weekend in Brighouse. That’s it, I thought, I’m  gonna keep at this. I even got a cross frame so that I had a bike of my own to get used to before the race (I still don’t like mountain bikes). After a few test runs and a high intensity interval session I was ready to race.

I was excited about this race, I’d been looking forward to it all week. I was determined to at least finish it. When we got there, we decided to enter my son Ben into the youth race, he’s only 3 but he managed to complete it (4 laps down) with Rob running behind him to catch any falls.

The problem was that the kids race over ran, my bike was still in the car and there was only 20 minutes until my race actually started. By the time I actually got my bike, everyone was lining up ready to start. I got all stressed out; I hadn’t been able to warm up and I hadn’t been able to pre-ride the course. One of my friends had warned me about a tricky descent as well. I thought I’d just have to go for it.

Off we went anyway, I felt quite good, I got a fairly good start. The winding grassy parts were fine. The first ascent was fine. The flat part at the top was fine. The descent… really not fine. I started going down it before I could get onto my drops. I managed to get my right hand down and pull the brake, but as we know, cross bikes don’t have particularly good brakes.

The descent was steep and bendy, full of tree roots and bumps. I was flying down it completely out of control, one hand on my drops the other on the hood. About half way down I knew I was going to crash at some point it was just a question of when. I could see the grass at the bottom. Was I going to make it? I was nearly there…. At the last moment I hit a huge great tree root, went straight over my handlebars and face-planted the only bit of tarmac in the whole park. Oh dear.

I was badly winded as my ribs had landed on my handlebars and it took me a while to get up. The first aid people were there straight away and helped to untangle my legs from my bike. I’d smacked the ground with my head (luckily my helmet protected me and I only bruised my chin). As I’d hit the ground I had also slid on my front slightly and grazed all my forearms and hands. My hips were all bruised from the impact and there were some bruises on my legs that I am not sure how I got! All in all it was a pretty spectacular crash and I have heard that the sound it made was impressive.

I’m now recovering from it, feeling little bit embarrassed about the whole thing. My ribs are the sorest at the moment but all my flesh wounds are healing nicely. Surprisingly it hasn’t put me off, it’s made me even more frustrated that I haven’t finished a cross race yet. So it’s Huddersfield next Sunday and I’m  gonna finish it if it kills me! Third time lucky……!