The very first book I`ve ever read was about Robin Hood and his adventures in the Sherwood Forest.Therefore I was quite excited to go the place where my childhood hero defeated the absurdly evil sheriff of Notthingham.
After picking up my friends early on Sunday, we headed towards Mansfield Park. The weather was brilliant and it remained like that all day long.
At 10am started the Elite Female race and they started their 5 laps on the course. It was very flat, without triple arrow descents, a fast and not too exciting lap indeed, the only exciting point was log across the route. Some riders jumped right through it, others chose to cross it slowly, therefore, luckyly enought, we saw only a handful crashes there.
The juvenile and youth races started right after the elite female race
and the impressive amount of cyclist had an exciting race in the woods.
However
There was one, very unlucky racer, who lost his saddle in his first lap, but didn`t give up and carried on saddle-less – kudos!
The front pack of the elite riders formed a formidable train as they rambled through to course. In each lap, a different rider was in the front so we all expected a sprint finish.
It didn`t happen however, Jody Crawforth brought home the win relatively easily, though the gap between him and the following riders (David Fletcher and Oliver Beckingsale) wasn`t big.
We weren`t able to see the closing masters races, so we headed for the parking lot. And that was where we saw this modest ride with a bike rack. Impressive indeed.
