SXC Round 3 – Cathkin Braes

SXC Round 3 – Cathkin Braes

May 24, 2016 Off By petef

The weekend saw club rider Peter Flick competing in round 3 of the SXC Series at the Cathkin Braes Commonwealth Games course. With one of the largest fields seen in a few years in the sport category, also due to the Scottish University Champs, it proved a very competitive day on the hills overlooking Glasgow.

The weather was close to 17C and the very dry and gravelly course made the many twists and turns quite difficult to negotiate. Cathkin is a man-made trail and features some quite technical sections, with a number of riders hitting the deck on the loose terrain, there were also quite a few punctures throughout the day due to the rocky terrain even with tubeless setups. There is probably less climbing on this course than others so it would favour the more skilled riders.

The SXC races use a grid starting system where riders with ranking points get the more favourable starting berths. With no points to my name I started in the third row, a good start is key in order to avoid having to work your way through the field. Thankfully I got one and managed to get into about 5th place with some very fast pedalling. The first lap of five was the quickest, I then settled into roughly 17 and half minutes per lap keeping the pace fairly steady throughout the race. It is hard to know where you are in the race due to the staggered starts of the different categories so when the podium was announced and 3rd came up it was a surprise to say the least. The next round is in Dalbeattie Forest on the 3rd July.

Results can be found here.

Up next for the club is the Glentress 7 event this weekend. 7 hours of torture on a bike. Mike Milne, Davy Hill, Colin Nicol, Nienke Oostra and Andrew Kindness will be in attendance.