As you will have noticed we’ve had some proper winter conditions over the last week. Lots of fun - sledging with the kids, snowball fights, traffic chaos….all the usual stuff. But the best bit has to be mountain biking in the snow. Faced with thick ice on all but main roads, any kind of sensible ride on the road is out of the question, so heading out into the hills to hear your tyres crunch through the snow is the only option. Of course getting to the off-road bit involves some road riding, which around my way last weekend meant negotiating the bike through a series of ice-rinks linked by occassional stretches of tarmac. Easier on a thick tyred mtb than a skinny road bike but still a test of handling skills. As long as you keep it light on the pedals and don’t brake or turn you should be fine!
So I had a great ride last sunday, two and a half hours zig-zagging my way around Boxhill and Ranmore Common in the North Downs. A great blast and a real workout, it’s amazing how quickly one warms up when slogging up an off-road climb!
The downside of the weather is the necessity to catch the train into work rather than ride in. Living 30 miles from Mosquito allows me to do a good bit of my training by simply riding into the shop. The state of the roads this week has made this impossible and I’ve been relegated to the train along with everyone else (and their germs!).
Still it’s nearly Christmas and if the snow stays I’ll be out their playing in it again on Boxing Day and hopefully working off a bit of the Christmas Spirit. Merry Christmas!

So, son Thomas had his eye on a cyclocross race at Herne Hill last saturday, he’s racing in the Under 12’s now and this was to be part of the British Cycling club championships, meaning an opportunity for him to score points for his club Preston Park Youth CC. I figured if we were to go to the trouble of going along I might as well make the most of it and enter the Senior event myself.

My last cyclocross race was a rather poor showing back in February at the London League team champs where I made a pretty poor job of ‘making up the numbers’!

Preparations begin the night before, sorting out the bike. I use my Independent Fabrication Planet X as my winter commuting/training bike and am afraid it only gets the occasional outing as a race steed. So, mudguards and lights off and ‘cross tyres on. Fortuntately I have a pair of fantastic Mavic R-SYS wheels on loan from Mavic which shod with a good set of’cross clinchers are hard to beat (at my level at least, the top guys swear by tubulars run at ridiculously low pressures, but that’s a whole other story).

Thomas’s race is at 11.15 so we are at the track 45 mins before, giving him a chance to ride round and me plenty of time to sign him on and get numbers. Around 15 riders line up for the Under 12’s race and pretty soon a lead group of 3 forms - Thomas, a lad from the Velo Club Londres (my old club and riding on home turf at Herne Hill) and another from Team Darenth. The 3 ride together for a couple of laps but then the gaps open as experience shows, Thomas finishes in 3rd a very happy boy and his first podium finish of the ‘cross season - worth a few points for the club and £6 to add to the pocket money kitty!

It’s a couple of hours till my race so I head off to warm up and Thomas goes off to the catering stall to fill up on bacon sarnies.
I sit myself back on the grid for the race start not wanting to get in the way of the ‘big boys’ and happy to settle for a plodding start. It doesn’t take long to settle into the groove though and I’m feeling pretty good till I look down at the pulse-monitor which tells me my pulse is 170 and I’ve only been racing for 10 mins. Bloody hell, no way I can keep this up for another 50 mins surely? But (I tell myself) that’s ‘cross racing, tough both physically and psychologically. Anyway 10 mins later and the pulse hasb’t dropped and I’m actually passing riders until ‘bang’, down I go. Trying to overtake on the side of some singletrack my front wheel goes down hard into a concealed hole and head over heels I go. Straight up again though and all seems well, bikes ok, bodies ok, new team kit isn’t torn so back on the bike and away we go. However I’ve lost a minute and the group I was passing have ridden away. Thirty minutes ridden so thirty to go (‘cross races being typically ‘an hour plus a lap’) and I have my usual crisis (along the lines of, I’ve been doing this for 30 mins and I’m knackered, there’s no way I can go on and anyway whats the point). This negativity usually lasts about 10 minutes (until the finish starts to feel in reach) and sure enough with 15 mins left I’m still going strong and catching riders. A guy from the VCL holds onto my wheel for a lap but I eventually loose him in the technical sections and ride in to the finsh on my own, completely wiped out but satisfied.

Putting the bikes back in the car I miss the prize presentation where fellow Mosquito/Londoncyclesport rider Matt Seaton picks up cash for 1st Vet and 3rd overall and there is much hilarity when Thomas has to go up to pick up my winnings for 6th Vet.
A good days racing for both of us. A low key race representing the grass roots and the real soul of our sport, organised by a local south London club, the De Laune, and the sort of event at which tomorrow’s Bradley Wiggins learn their trade and without which the sport has no future.
On the way home, hungry, we stop for a couple of bags of chips and reflect that perhaps it was’nt such a bad way to spend a dreary saturday in early December.

It’s been a long time coming but the new Mosquito/Londoncyclesport race team is now official, following the ultra-slick team launch last thursday. Well it was fairly slick for us; riders turned up, got kitted out in the new kit and lined up to have photos taken in front of a Mosquito banner. All very convivial and conveniently followed by us all piling down to the Rouleur Photography Album launch party (a fine publication, perfect for the cyclist in your life!).
We have been running a Mosquito team for many years now with varying degrees of success and interest but I’ve felt for some time that it needed some re-invigorating and the opportunity to combine with Londoncyclesport (www.londoncyclesport.com, for many years an invavluable source of info for all London cyclists) was the boost we needed.
Given the ages of most of the team members it looks like we will be concentrating on Veterans (over 40’s) racing! In fact my aim is to have a strong veterans team combined with a youth/junior section. Hopefully us old boys have a pretty good idea of what we are doing and whilst taking the racing seriously can also keep things in perspective (our days of dreaming of pro-level racing on the continent being long past). Alongside the vets we are looking to build a strong youth/junior squad allowing us to help to youngsters on their way to bigger things.Our star junior rider is Hugo Humphreys, who is just into his first year as a junior (up till 16 you ride as a youth) and performing admirably on the cyclocross scene scoring a podium finish in last weekends South East Cross Champs.
The new team has certainly spurred me into action and I’m really looking forward to once again racing with old friends such as Matt with whom I began my racing career (I still recall the dread with which we both signed on for our first road race in a Surrey village hall some 20 years ago).
So we’ve got the fancy new kit, sponsors are lining up and we even have our own team website (www.mosquitolondoncyclesport.com), roll on 2010.