BUSA Race 2000

9.30 Trinity Gates it said on the e-mail (i wrote it so i should know) for the trip up to Birmingham Uni for this years BUSA Cyclo-X competition. So when i turned up at about ten to ten, the other three members of the team travelling in our esteemed club captains car were already there, with helpful comments such as "you look as though you've just got of bed". Which to be fair i had, an hour later than planned...

We (Dave Worthington, club captain; Ian Corfe (me!), MTB Captain; and Nick Crowther and Sarah Pemberton, our female representatives) began to fit the rack on the back of Dave's car, to the amusement of and sound of helpful comments from the roadies gathering for the usual sunday morning run. Dave's cousin's bike took pride of place on the roof (and would be first to come off under a low bridge/carpark entrance) with the other three being extremely well secured on the back, courtesy of a few thousand feet of rope and some boy scout special knots from Dave and I.
Then we piled in the car and set off, driving the half a mile to Dave's hose to knock up a makeshift number plate board from some youghurt pots and sticky back plastic - sorry, card and a pen. Securing this sorry attempt to the bikes with copious amounts of sellotape, we set off properly, hoping not to attract the attention of the police...

Thanks to some foresight from Dave and bad navigation from me (twice round a rounabout with five traffic lights on it=frustration!) we arrived at the campus of Birmingham Uni almost exactly at the stroke of twelve, just as planned. We then spent about half an hour translating brummie to recognisable english (sorry any birminghamites) to find the signing on tent and realised we'd parked in the wrong car park, so drove about a bit more to find it. There we met up with the fifth member of the team, Tym Burman, and his parents - although they dashed off to buy a pimpy blue anodised headset spacer for tym's bike soon afterwards - he said it was essential to tighten the thing, but it matched suspiciously well with the other blue bits on the bike...

After some general messing about, getting changed and flashing half of the campus in the process, we signed on, did a bit of stretching and were soon qeued up on the line to start. There were about sixty blokes, with about fifteen ladies starting a couple of minutes later. The klaxon went and off we raced. a mad dash up a tarmac road (hurray say's Dave) gave way to a massive bottleneck requiring a dismount and run up some steps between tower blocks, with the men actually standing still for a while...i can do this, i thought!

Then onto some grass - quite muddy - round a sharp right turn and up a hill, not too steep but with a log across halfway to hop/get off at. turning at the top of the hill led to a downhill with alternate flat/steep parts and a few muddy corners, a series of three logs to hop/run past, then another larger log to run the bike over. Still carrying the bike you jumped down three steps, hopped over a stram, scrambled up the other side and remounted to a bit more grass, then more large steps and you were back in the field with the start/finish straight, going round three sides of this (muddy) field, sometimes running as it was faster, saw you at the finish line with one lap complete and (too) many more to do. By this tme the mens field had spread a little but with so many people on a short course there was always someone close. Apparently the eventual winner of the ladies event crashed badly on the very first corner (probably a roadie!) but picked herself up and continued to ride, winning in the process...

In the men, Dave was riding well, moving away from up the field, to finish in about 25th place overall, having been lapped by the eventual winner ( a guy from Brookes) once in the process - beating his previous outings place two years ago comfortably. Tym passed me at about halfway, to finish not too far behind Dave, and after i did a graceful dismount over the three logs (ie crashed) i dropped back and was lapped twice, and thankfully have no idea where i came! As we rode round, we came across the ladies at various points, and the indications were that sarah and nick were pretty high up the field, so i tried shouting encouragement. I also got shouted at by the Tab MTB captain, Kate Reeves, who recognised me as the sole OUCC representative on a Peak District weekend last year - it was however in a friendly manner as they had no teams to compete agaist us, so i tried to give some encouragement which probably would have looked better if i hadn't slipped as i tried to run past. Ah well...

All the while we were being shouted on and generally encouraged by tym's parents, also taking photos in embarrasing places like the stream as you vainly struggled to clamber through the mud. Anyway, with the line in sight i came home behind Tym, and Sarah, with Dave and Nick still out on the course. Dave had a running sprint for the line whcih he won, and the two people stopped on the line, to be hit by the next pair sprinting in - it looked like the borrowed bike had been damaged until we noticed a brake bloke forced into the spokes, and pulled it out. Then Nick came in, perspiring heavily ( i thought ladies glowed and didn't sweat?), deservedley after the effort she'd put in.

We hung around a bit, sharing stories and feeling ill! and then flashed the uni campus again in the process of getting changed. There was a good turnout for the prize giving, with people refueling from the burger n cake stall, and we duly got to see Nick and Sarah take the front to loud cheers from the OUCC posse (all three of us!) as they were announced winners of the ladies team prize, ahead of exeter and durham/nottingham (or someone) with individual positions of 4th and 6th respectively. They received the gold medals and nearly gold (yellow) t-shirts gracefully, and then went and complained when it transpired that the mens winners got an awful yellow bandana as well (think the oucc one but...worse!) - luckily there were a few left so they came home happily bedecked with said fashion mistakes.

Then it was a quick drive back, although my map-reading skills and Dave's concentration allowed us a view of some new parts of Birmingham before we hit the motorway, and an early bed for everyone (well, me at least). Thanks to Dave for driving and entering under pressure at the last minute, Tym for converting a single gear bike specially for the race, Nick and Sarah for riding well enough to claim the title of best females in the land, and the sun for staying out all day and making it quite pleasant if you forgot about the race! (It hailed last year so we were lucky!)
And if you've read this far down you deserve a medal yourself!

Ian Corfe

Oh, and there was an amusing incident closing Dave's car boot on the way home - the rack deformed the lid so it wouldn't lock despite muscular efforts from Dave and myself (errm, we tried real hard, honest), culminating in Dave climbing onto the car over the bikes to jump up and down until it clicked shut. We didn't look TOO much like car thieves...