Tell us about your weekend ride

I rode the London Cyclocross League round at Chainhurst. It's a great course, using the fields of Reed Court Farm, with lots of fast, flattish sections around fields, interspersed with some technical sections through woods.

Last time I rode it two years ago, the start was a nightmare with 3 or 4 pinch points on the first lap, but this year they started us in a different place and you had at least 2 minutes of racing before hitting the old start so the field was nicely lined out. I got a decent start and passed a few vets on the long run to the course, and at the end of the first lap was just behind a group with 4 or 5 vets so I worked hard to catch them and got past a couple of them on the second lap. There was one guy from Crawley Wheelers who I couldn't get up to, but I was then caught by Julian Wall from Cyclefit and a guy from Finsbury Park CC and we spent a couple of laps sizing each other up, and trying to close the gap on the Crawley guy. With 1.5 laps to go I realised I could go faster than we were going so went for it and gapped Julian, but took the Finsbury Park rider with me. On the last lap we caught the Crawley guy early on and blasted past him and went at it hammer and tongs to the end. Mr Finsbury rode well through one of the technical sections and got a gap, but coming out of the last corner I was right behind him so sprinted for it but he held me off and just beat me. Great fun.

I've no idea where I finished, but think it must be top 30 (a lot of big names weren't racing today, I think it was a National Trophy round oop north?) and hopefully another top ten in the vets (my goal for the season is to finish in the top ten of the vets standings in the London League).