The final round of this years series was held on Sunday at Checkendon, Reading, home of many events over the past few years. This year’s course was hard. The lap seemed to be long and there were some tough climbs. And the course was nearly all singletrack – you had to keep your wits about you as you squeezed between the trees.

After a short delay as an air ambulance landed to take a competitor to hospital, the race began with a charge up the field before the whole pack was lined out. On such a singletracky course it was important to get into the woods near the front – I reached the end of the field in third and no-one could pass for most of the lap. It was fast racing through the trees. Stuart Bowers was setting the pace with Jody Crawforth in second. I was finding the pace a little too high after the last three weeks of marathon events. I tried to hang in there but started to fade, hanging on to groups but finding it hard to stay with them. I ended up coming in in tenth place in the race and thought a podium series result was out of the question. To my surprise I had finished third overall.

Jody Crawforth won the race and with his three first places in this year’s series was the run away winner overall. Stuart Bowers took the second spot.

It wasn’t a fantastic race weekend for the team but we all had a good time at our team mate’s wedding the night before… Congratulations Paul and Sally!