Slush Cup #1

Not me or my photograph, but you can see it was a beautiful day to be in the forest

The first race of the winter mountain bike season is a race against the clock to determine which group you start in for the first real race in a couple of weeks. Having only ridden twice in October and having not ridden my mountain bike since May, I was not expecting great things and I wasn't disappointed with my predictions.
148 out of 186 overall and 60th out of 73 men - Crap.
I fell quite heavily on the first lap and hurt my arm and my left hip (makes a change from the right one) and when I got back on my bike, I realised that the bars were twisted by about 45 degrees. I managed to straighten them a bit but not completely so I had to ride the remaining 2½ of 3 laps with a 10-20 degree offset on my bars which didn't help matters much.

I need to do two things before the next race:

1. Train
2. Get used to riding off road again

This week's crash damage

I have also woken up feeling like I was hit by a truck and with a cold this morning just to remind me how badly prepared I was for that race.