In the days leading up to the event we had this glorious Indian Summer which made look as if we were going to have a rather dry night, especially after the reports of the conditions of last year I was certainly hoping for this. But toward the end of the afternoon on Saturday after rolling up and setting up the nomadic village the rain started, so the Indian summer had very quickly turned into a Welsh one. Then our attention turned to food, a nice chilli which definitely meant you would not need a rear light.

Thetford mtb racing had designed a real cracker of a course, just over 10 miles of flat, fast Thetford miles, I was buzzing after my practice lap. The rain however, had other ideas. As the riders got back from our team, you could see us getting progressively muddier and muddier. And just my luck, I was last. Will had the difficult job of starting, luckily he was up and running nicely, only to snap his chain a few hundred metres later adding a fair few minutes to this start loop. Everyone else managed to avoid any problems despite the extremely sketchy conditions; it was an absolute quagmire out there! On my 2nd lap intricate lines had appeared through the trees, it was actually a challenge to stay on the bike on the fire roads, I took my hands off the bars to put a gel in the gel bin and very nearly ended up on the deck!

In the end we came 42nd about halfway down the results but we definitely had some of the faster laps out of the riders in our category, the winners did an astonishing 15 laps!

I'd like to say thanks firstly to the Parents for driving us to and from places when they'd rather be in bed, Paul Thomas for providing Will, Callum and James with some fantastic Exposure lights, they really are worth the money and Mark Bowley for being the 'unofficial' team manager and finally a well done to Will Kearse, James Bowley and Callum Sherriff for their riding.

Photo's of the event can be found here. We're all looking forward to it next year!

Next is round 1 of the Gorrick Endura Autumn classic, this coming Sunday.

Ollie