Midland Series Round 1 - Hanchurch Woods, Stoke

After a week or more of sunny, Spring weather, the 2010 Midlands XC Series got underway at a sunny and unusually dry Hanchurch Woods near Stoke. Many peoples favourite XC race course of the moment, Hanchurch offers a great mix of technical single track, tough climbing (even more so after the forestry machines had cut up the fireroads) and a fast, swoopy and importantly dry course to race on.

Ben was looking for progress from the Southern XC rd1 the week before when he had won but had not put together the consistent lap times he had been aiming at. The Junior race was made even more interesting by the presence of the Australian Junior National Champion, Mitchell Codner, in the UK preparing for the World Cup round at Dalby. Mitchell had finished 17th in the World Championships in 2009 and would offer a real world class test for the rest of the Junior field.

Ben's race plan was not to go off too hard but to settle into the pace early on, trying to avoid some of the issues over the past few races. At the end of the long fire road start straight the group were all together turning on to the first climb with Ben, the Australian and ex Orange Monkey rider Nat Jarvis all tucked in behind the wheel of Matt Sumpton. On the first climb Nat and Ben had a coming together as they jostled for position and by the time they had extricated themselves they were forced to play catch up from the back of the bunch. 20 minutes later the Australian was first to show and came through with a 45 second lead. Ben had managed to get back in contention and was running second ahead of Matt Sumpton, James Hyde and Nat Jarvis. By the next lap the Australian had opened the gap further and Ben had been joined by Matt Sumpton. At this point in previous races Ben had found his energy dipped but now he was able to put in a big effort and had his fastest lap of the day putting a gap into Matt and taking some time out of the Australian Champion. The final lap saw the leading pair consolidate their positions with Ben maintaining a 1 minute gap to the Australian to take 2nd whilst Matt slipped back on Ben to take 3rd.

So on a warm sunny spring day it was job done for Ben who had acquitted himself well against World Class competition and more importantly had continued his progress to form following the disappointment of the opening round of the British Mountain Bike Series at Sherwood a few weeks ago.