Round 5 of CCXL is…guess where….MK Bowl….and get this….it’s only our local frikking club – Team MK – organising the bloody thing!! Excited…..exactly, so am I…then scorch off and read on you bibliomaniac you.
So being the local community club Velobants is (plus the fact we are also all actually members of Team MK) we all volunteered to help out with the course building for Saturdays race.
The main objective of the exercise was to simply make the course as hard as fecking possible for everyone apart from Kevvo & Tommo which would therefore have some kind of positive affect on our position…..in reality this is actually rubbish seeing as the 4m width between the stripy tape is literally going to destroy our muscle wasted legs into submission regardless of the course geography!!
We arrived eager as a beaver and ready to build at the infamous MK bowl…..first impressions……YIKES. We thought arriving 18 hours before the race was due to start more progress would have been made, but clearly there had been some serious brain stormin normin performin before hand and the creative juices had been crushed, squeezed, pulped and almost definitely filtered to remove all those horrible pulpy bits….hate those!….but prior activity looked slight avec sparce….
As I’ve mentioned before….yawn….we’ve all raced the bowl a fair few times, however every time there is always that little twist that “makes it your own”….and today certainly didn’t disappoint.
Ian T (commissaire extraordinaire course builder bloke with an exceptional beard) had come up with a concept so imaginary…..so conceptual…..it would be written in cyclocross course building history….something Sir Benedict Campbell would be proud of…..Google that shit you’ll be impressed. After a swift brief we were set to a number of course crafting activities guaranteed to be ripped down and repeated within hours…GO GO GO
Some images to moisten the lips:
Clearly didn’t skip leg day ^^^ although I was tensioning them ever so slightly for the camera
Strong boot of the wellington game
Strong BobbleHat game shown by Kevvo…..we will (mainly due to popular demand) be posting a thorough, exhaustive, full-retard bobble hat review in length in detail in this blog in a week or so.
We used SUPER tape….none of this normal shit !!
Once the course pole sticky things had been laid out, removed, laid out again in a very similar exacting, identical position, it was time to tape….lots of tape…..loads of that shiz…..9km to be precise…..not before we got all the tools out….saws…..rakes…..cans of stella…..everyfink.
EFF-WHY-I: Those spindly looking things below are NOT the rake handles….they’re actually Keeno’s legs !
I’ll bunnyhop up these…..EASY……EASY……
I won that impressive jacket in an International BMX competition…..FACT
So jump forward 4 hours….Delorean flux capacitor stylie and we are essentially done….bar a few barriers and probably another 6km of stripy tape….and in the boozer.
Course summary: (thought I would bold that up to maximise the impactual force)
Climbs: There are are some…..scrap that….LOTS of off camber climbs, some pretty technical off camber descents….a few long drags at the base of the bowl and also a fairly fast start finish line.
Flats: A few short strips, but a lengthy one running along the base of the bowl…into the wind!
Technical bits and bobbles: Lots of these critters, so really nice down hill switch back turns that looked tricky in the dry, will certainly be fun after a few hours of rubbering in”.”
Quote of the day: “you can ride it but you can’t race it”
And just to finish….the weather looks absolutely fantastic for the V40 depart at 12:00 tomorrow…..cue the emoji with the raised eyebrow and really scared looking glare !!
44mph wind !!!!!! Oh god help us !…plus I really need to charge my phone !
