Atkinson and Dickson triumph, Jesus best college.
1st Woman-Jess Atkinson (Churchill)
1st Man- Seb Dickson (Corpus)
1st Town Bike- Dan Eatough (Corpus)
College Winners- Jesus
On the 4th March, 57 cyclists and 1 unicyclist lined up to see just which is the best college at Cycling.(perhaps surprisingly, it isn’t Girton) With some very fast times laid down already in the season so far by people new and old, it was going to be an interesting race!Continue reading
by Tom Simpson
The victorious Men’s Team
The 2017 edition of Varsity XC took off with another early morning. We gathered in Catz car park in the dark to pile eleven bikes into the back of our hired transporter and arrange ourselves between the three additional cars. To everyone’s surprise, Official Supporter Jali Packer put in a heroic effort to make it to Catz for 6:15 am after his Women’s Varsity Netball Dinner the night before, pillow still in hand. Once at Crowthorne Woods in Berkshire, the venue once again, we met with Rob Walker and Tom Wade – making the Cambridge team up to a huge fourteen men and three women!Continue reading
Report by Race Captain, John Mulvey
Ed Lee-Six, Hal Bradbury, Seb Dickson and myself showed our lack of knobbly-tyred inclinations and on the same date as the Varsity MTB race headed down to north London to ride the early season classic that is the North Road Hardriders.
Whilst the weather was kind this year, road works meant the hilly course was shortened to 22 miles. Seb placed 6th in 53.15, 2 mins down on winner Lloyd Chapman, with Hal 8th, myself 10th and Ed in 42nd. CUCC missed out on the team prize only because someone (cough Seb cough) is not racing in light blue colours, so an encouraging result considering so many of us were away racing against Oxford.
Seb Receives his cheque for £50
Full race report available here: https://www.cyclingtimetrials.org.uk/race-report/14538
6th – Seb Dickson – 53:15
8th – Harold Bradbury – 54:04
10th – John Mulvey – 54:39
42nd – Ed Lee-Six – 1:02:59
Nine CUCC riders braved the cold, wet and even slightly snowy conditions to compete in the traditional, season opening Ely Hardriders Time Trial.
The cold weather, strong breeze and wet conditions meant that no super quick times would be posted, and many decided that the aero gains of a skinsuit and carbon wheels would be better traded for some warmer clothes and effective braking! Continue reading
For the last two weekends running Toby and I have been heading down to Hog Hill to work on our crit racing skillz in the Cat 4 only Saturday race series. The ‘chopperfest’ description is unwarranted, although both our crashes at training camp have landed us firmly in the chopper camp (I’m speaking on your behalf here, Toby). Anyway, to simplify our report we decided to split it into a nice and simple ‘what went well’ and ‘what we can do better’. So here goes: Continue reading
On the weekend of 19th/20th November a small group of us took the excuse of BUCS track Championships to take a trip to the mecca of british cycling that is National Cycling Centre. Home of British Cycling and Team Sky, the current generation of world beating British cyclists were formed and molded here, in the hard kilometres of training and countless hours spent on the boards lapping the track. The astute amongst you might be aware that the current generation of CUCC cyclists were not formed and molded on the boards, due to what I can only assume is an oversight by leadership of British Cycling to have not yet built a velodrome in or around Cambridge. Wholly inadequate as it was, 2 hours of track time at Derby would have to do.Continue reading
CUCC MTB Captain, Tom Simpson reports:
The last Sunday of October was the date of the first round of the KLMTB Revel Outdoors Winter XC Series, and we had a strong CUCC contingent of five riders head over to Thetford forest to race. The changing clocks (we eventually worked out) would allow us an extra hour in bed, which was a relief as we had been busy trying to obtain a bike for Arnav to race on well into the evening. Myself, Arnav Kapur, Sam Haigh and Toby Cowell rode the 1.5hr course format – Toby in the junior category – while Andy Zhao chose the slightly shorter 1hr race.Continue reading
There was one of the strongest CUCC showings in years at the weekend’s National 25, with 7 riders qualifying for the event.
Hayley Simmonds, who submitted her PhD this year, continued her storming summer at the Womens’ event on Saturday. Having already won the BC national championships (and therefore the right to wear the national champion’s jersey), set new competition records at 10, 25 and 50 miles in the space of 2 weeks (and new club records in the process!) she was the favourite lining up for the start. She came home with a clear winning margin of over a minute and a half in a time of 54:57. Hayley has been a mainstay of the club’s BUCS effort winning more BUCS points on her own than probably any other athlete in Cambridge and it will be sad to see her go!
In the mens event there were 6 people riding- in itself an acheivement, really showing the strength in depth the club has at the moment. It was quite windy, making for a very fast first leg but depressingly slow second half. John Mulvey did best of the bunch doing a short 50 and coming 27th. The second man in the Varsity team, this now means that he has completed all the criteria and is the clubs newest Full Blue!
Hal came agonisingly close to joining him but fell short so is still a half blue for the moment
Report by Tom Simpson . . .
The 2016 Varsity mountain bike XC was held on a chilly Sunday in February at Crowthorne Woods in Berkshire. The team, which left Cambridge at 6:00am (already demonstrating their greater commitment over Oxford by waking up an hour earlier), consisted of captain Matt Rodgers, myself, old hand Fin Allen, ‘retired’ 24-hour racer Andrew Clark and fresher Danny Taylor. Reaching Crowthorne two hours later we threw in a practice lap of the course, Danny making good use of his kneepads after snagging a tree; between us, our 780mm bars made us more rad but also more bloody-fingered on the twisty woodland course. We had time for a brief introduction with the team from The Other Place [Oxford] and found that our universities’ engineering prowess had resulted in not one but two home-built bikes being raced.
The nine of us lined up on the start line together after giving the category with which we shared the race a five minute head start. Oxford’s female rider, Tamara Davenne, competed separately in the women’s race, topping the podium. Meanwhile in the men’s Varsity, split seconds after the starting horn, a loud crunching and cursing indicated a bad start for Oxford’s Tom Everitt with a broken chain. The start was fast, but I held second followed by two more Oxfords and the Cambridge team into the first single track section. Unfortunately they soon edged past, but I held the third’s wheel with Matt in close pursuit behind, managing to pull him back and take a chunk of time through the second and third laps. The winding course gave regular sightings of Andy and Fin working their way through the men’s field with which they had made contact soon after the start.Continue reading
