I won at Blists Hill last year, on a lovely evening. Surely the weather wouldn’t be great again? This was my 3rd time going to this event, and it was sunny on all three of them. This year wouldn’t bring the joy of last year, and there were problems from the start. My back wheel was loose, so I started a walk back to the pits. 10 minutes before the start I got a puncture which meant that I had to do another long walk back to the pits and I was now a teeny bit stressed. My start position wasn’t too bad, so I wasn’t too nervous about a terrible start.
My start was average, and in fact my first few laps were average. I wasn’t doing that badly, it’s just I wasn’t doing great either. On the penultimate lap, I was about 5 seconds behind Sam Ryland, but he then punctured. I punctured about 10 seconds later, but luckily it was a slow puncture so I could cruise round to the pits. Then I passes Josh Field who also punctured and by this time I was worrying about the state of the course. My chain got messed up in the derailleur meaning I had to run to the pits anyway to get my mountain bike. My race had been extremely chaotic, so I rode at a fairly slow speed on the last lap to make sure that I held my position, and came 7th. What a mental race!