Photos thanks to Simon Kirk – www.dlitephoto.com

Martyn Salt gave fans and long time supporters of his Soggy Bottom series a great event with which to end the series last Sunday, with a good turnout, a great course and some equally good weather.

As if all that wasn’t enough, Martyn had come up with an intriguing twist to interest the crowds. With the first three rounds following the usual format with multiple categories, the fourth and final round was billed as the Super Soggy Final. Adopting a handicap approach, riders’ start times were determined from the average lap times from the previous rounds. This meant slower riders starting first with a head start, leaving the fast riders having to work hard to catch up.

The idea was that the riders would come together at the finish, promising some very fast and frantic racing in the final stages of the race. Sounds good in theory and it worked rather well. The Super Soggy Final was open to the fastest riders over the series, while those of us who didn’t qualify (in my case, by virtue of not having done any of the other rounds…) had to start in the Open category which left just before the first handicap riders. The racing was certainly frantic throughout the duration of the four laps, with faster riders catching, but it was something of a harder race for those who had to make up a lot of time.

Speaking to organiser Martyn Salt afterwards, he commented: “We were really pleased with the super final and people seemed to enjoy the new style of race that created lots of psychological challenges as well as physical. This year our numbers have been strong again for the series and it’s great to see so many racing in the winter here, and also at the Gorricks and Marin Series at Thetford”.

We were interested to see if this new approach worked with the riders, so asked a couple of long-time supporters of the series. Soggy regular Gary Jennings said:

“The Soggy series continues to impress. Judging by the lap times of the guys and girls out front there’s been an upturn in the quality of racers this year, but it retains the laid back, grassroots appeal that gets occasional racers like me to the start line and the more committed to interrupt their off-season training regimes. Each race has been well presented and is a credit to Martyn and his team. It’s certainly made the winter more enjoyable!”

“I thought it was a great idea to see us out of winter and into the summer season,” said Johnathan Dominguez. “Roadies get pursuit races with riders setting off in staggered groups according to ability, so why shouldn’t we? The racing was super fast and with it being spread out straight away there was none of the first corner backlogs or start straight crashes to ruin your race. It was flat out from the off. It gave us all good practice in catching and passing riders. Well done Martyn for trying something new. The Soggys weren’t broke but you still fixed them to something more interesting. Any race that gives me a head start over the gits who train gets a tick in my book…”

Full results at www.xcracer.com and plenty of photos at www.dlitephoto.com.