Sunday was the penultimate round in the wessex cyclocross league. This week was the return to Southampton sports centre with very different conditions to the October round. The course was frozen at the start of the day getting muddier, slippier and harder throughout the races. A bumpy start on frozen ruts into a muddy hairpin then back round to a tough off camber section followed by a big muddy puddle. A flat lap of a cricket pitch provided some recovery before heading through a sticky section over the finish line. Plenty of twists and turns before a couple of banks and back over to the start.

Four New Forest riders made the trip with Matt Knight and Jay Tarrant riding first. Jay’s race started well, easily in the top 10 but a puncture after just a couple of laps put an end to his day. Matt also got a good start and had a strong race finishing 34th.

Emma Shepherd was up next with course starting to deteriorate. A lack of confidence in the slippy conditions put Emma a bit further back than normal after 2 laps but her confidence grew throughout and she started to claw back a few places to finish 10th overall and 5th in the seniors.

Joe Shepherd was up last with the course now pretty much all mud. A slippy start put Joe on the back foot but he quickly made up some places on the off camber. There were a lot of tumbles throughout the race including a couple from Joe but he powered his way through for a well deserved 15th.

Next week is the final round of the Wessex league at Crow which we will be helping to host. Catherine posted about this on the Facebook group the other week and I’m sure there will be plenty more communications this week. It would be great to see plenty of New Forest members helping, supporting and riding.