{"id":174,"date":"2008-11-23T18:37:52","date_gmt":"2008-11-23T17:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=174"},"modified":"2008-11-30T21:56:34","modified_gmt":"2008-11-30T20:56:34","slug":"west-midlands-cyclo-x-rnd-8-solihull","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=174","title":{"rendered":"West Midlands Cyclo-X Rnd 8 &#8211; Solihull"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I nearly didnt get to the<a href=\"http:\/\/www.wmccl.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\"> race<\/a>. A huge pile up on the M6 Toll in the horrendous weather completley blocked the motorway. It must have just happened as I was one of the first cars in the queue that quickly built up. As I didn&#8217;t witness it and there seemed plenty of people milling about getting things sorted I got going as soon as the motorway was partially clear. The weather all the way down was a combination of hail, lightening and torrential rain, but it eased off a little as I got to the event. The Vets\/Ladies\/Youth race was still in progress, so after I signed on I watched and cheered on my new\u00a0clubmates. After lots of\u00a0pondering I have finally decided to join <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lichfieldccc.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">Lichfield City CC.<\/a>\u00a0I can&#8217;t wear my own sponsors logos etc at Cyclo Cross and other British Cycling events once I get a racing license for various reasons, so I thought I&#8217;d join a club where I already know a few people.<br \/>\nDonning the club Jersey, quite a few club members introduced themselves and seemed to know who I was, I made to feel most welcome, and am glad I&#8217;ve joined.<br \/>\nThe race itself was a bit star studded. Liam Killeen was in attendance (watching Mammoth&#8217;s Mechanic Darrell competing at cross for the first time on his old bike), and a Columbia Rider Roger Hammond. The mud was sticky and disgusting, the course tough with lots of running and huge head winds, plus the rain started again. I enjoyed the course, particularly outbraking the cross bikes on the slipperly decents, and other than being laped by\u00a0Hammond mid race\u00a0I only got lapped by the other top riders on the last lap. The gears just about held together only causing me a problem on thr last lap, but I didnt lose any time to them. I ended up 18th ( out of 44)\u00a0which I am very happy with, I&#8217;m not sure how much quicker I would be on a cross bike, but I have decided to finish the season on the mountain bike. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wmccl.co.uk\/results\/league08\/league08.html\" target=\"_blank\">Results<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/Solihull1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Singletrack at Solihull\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/smSolihull1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"113\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/Solihull2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Finish line before senior race !\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/smSolihull2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"113\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/Solihull3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Bike Afterwards\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/smSolihull3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"113\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I nearly didnt get to the race. A huge pile up on the M6 Toll in the horrendous weather completley blocked the motorway. It must have just happened as I was one of the first cars in the queue that quickly built up. As I didn&#8217;t witness it and there seemed plenty of people milling &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=174\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;West Midlands Cyclo-X Rnd 8 &#8211; Solihull&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-competitions","category-cyclo-cross"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}