BRITISH NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS 2006 – Moelfre, Wales

After Brazil I had decided to skip the European Champs and take the week off as I felt like my body needed a good recovery before the 2nd part of the season. It was great timing as it was a great week of sport on the television, with Wimbledon and the Football World Cup finals!! I returned to training at the start of the week but I was still feeling pretty drained. I had not been feeling right, getting stomach pains and feeling a bit sick in the mornings since I had come back from Brazil so I finally went to the doctors just before I left for the national.

After doing some tests they found out I had brought a little present back from Brazil in my gut ! A little parasite called Giardia that is very common in South America and Asia. It’s most likely that I picked it up from the water or from just touching a surface that had been touched by someone who had Giardia. Anyway I managed to start the antibiotics at the weekend so hopefully I will be clear of it in a week. I was glad to find out why I hadn’t been feeling great and also I was fortunate that the race at the weekend was on quite a short track so I shouldn’t be too affected by my low energy levels.

It has been a scorching week in England and the track for the national was so dry and dusty that it was changing so fast with the weekend of practice. It got so loose and dusty that I decided to use my swampthing mud tyres to try and get some extra grip. The weekend was spread out a lot as we had practice and seeding on the Friday and then did not race until the Sunday. I only did 3 practice runs on the Friday as I had overworked my shoulder in the week running up to the race and I was trying to give it as long as possible to recover before starting riding again.

Luckily it recovered really quickly and riding in the afternoon it was feeling fine. I seeded in 2nd behind Rachel Atherton, 3 secs back. I knew Rach was going to be tough to beat this weekend as it is a track that her brothers built and one that they have trained on loads over the last few years. She also just won the European Champs so would still be riding on a high from that result. However I knew that I could go a lot faster as I really hadn’t done much practice yet.

By the time Sunday came I had timed my practice and I was doing runs that were about 6/7secs faster than Rachel’s seeding time so I knew I was going about the right pace.

The race went well, I got all my lines, I took it easy in one of the sections that had really got blown out during practice and then just pedalled aggressively where I felt it was safe to. It was a tough track as there was so much narrow off camber riding that you could not afford to come off line anywhere. I was pleased with my run and I crossed the line with a time of 2.40min, taking the lead from Helen Gaskell who posted a 2.46min. I then had to wait to see if Rachel could beat my time, she came down in 2.44min so I had the win.

It was great to win a National Title again as I have missed out on the event for the last few years and especially now with the standard of riding in the UK, it’s a great result and also a great step in my preparation for the World Championships in less than 6 weeks time.

So now it’s a couple of days at home and then off to Finland this weekend to ride and race at the Kona Bike Park in Levi. It should be really good fun as the sun doesn’t go down in Finland at this time of year !!