Thetford Forest’s Marin Winter Series got under way at the weekend, and by a happy coincidence the winner was Luke Smith, riding for Marin’s sister brand Whyte. The 25-year old endurance ace battled through the mud to take the race after a close-fought four hours in Thetford Forest.

Here’s Luke’s own report:

“The weather was particularly bad on the Saturday and I appreciated that the course was going to be hard work, but the weather reports promised a brighter outlook for Sunday. When I awoke Sunday morning to pouring rain, to say I wasn’t impressed is a bit of an understatement!

“Because of the soaking conditions and the distance of the race I didn’t worry too much about a warm-up, but that might have been a bit of a mistake as the field set off at a blistering pace with no respect for the duration of this event.

“This was how it would continue for the next few laps. We managed to form a small group of only three riders with one more getting across to us on the third lap. Unfortunately for us one rider wasn’t keen on making things easy and kept jumping off the front and varying the pace constantly. This not only made things harder for us, he also underestimated the effect it was having on him – he dropped out when the clock hit the two-hour mark!

“At least now the pace was constant because the course was hard enough to deal with – the mud had formed a sticky porridge texture and this made the course relentless with no rest at any point.

“Later on the race myself and another rider managed to break away on our own leaving just the two of us to fight it out – or so we thought at that point. Going into the later stages of the race he took a fall in one of the course’s tricky bombhole sections. This gave me the opportunity to break away and I didn’t need much prompting!

“I dug deep and put in a solid effort but what I didn’t know was that, after crashing, the rider behind me was caught by the third place rider and the two of them were working hard to pull me back. Unfortunately for me, they succeeded in their quest and made contact coming into the arena for the last time, only for one of the riders to puncture.

“So it left myself and Shaun Hurrell fighting it out. The pace was steady on the final lap as I think we both knew it would be difficult to forge any sort of gap on this course – as the lap went on it was obvious it was going to come down to a sprint finish.

“Leaving the final boggy section and heading for the arena I was glued to his back wheel and as the pace was upped I hung on in there waiting till the very last minute to jump. I engaged top gear to swing past only for it to start slipping and jump because of all the mud lodged in the cassette – with no other option I just had to keep pushing it. Thankfully it didn’t cause to many problems and I managed to go round Shaun to take the victory.

“It was a difficult sprint and that made the victory even more satisfying!”

Luke won on a carbon/aluminium Whyte 19 and drank Torq energy stuff. Second was Shaun Hurrell and third was Adrian Scott. The 40+ category was won by Paul Ashby and the women’s category by Maggie Bichard (who did the same number of laps as Luke and would have placed 13th in the 16-39 Men category…). Next round of the Marin Winter Series is on 14 January 2007 at High Lodge, Mayday Meadow. More details (and full results from Round 1, including all the two-hour racers) at www.thetfordmtbracing.com.