Jamie’s Year

You may remember that Jamie Kershaw, one of our “up and coming”  members benefits from funding from the club’s youth development programme. Here’s his report on how his cycling year has gone . Great work Jamie!

My year started with me finishing off the remaining rounds of the LCXL series which, after a long winter of CX racing, I managed to win the league even though I was a 1st year under 16 racing against 2nd years.

My year then went into the road season that consisted of Nationals and Mallory Youth League and some club time trials.  My first Road Race was a National 2 day at Pembrey Race Circuit.  The circuit looked quite dangerous as it was a very tight circuit with 100 riders going round it at the same time.  This race allowed me to take in some notes as to what my road season as a 1st year under 16 was going to be like and what I could work on throughout the year at local races.  My next race was the Mallory Youth League and my goal was to try and attack every race and win a race but even though I did attack every race I didn’t always get the result I wanted and my best result ended up being 3rd.

Throughout most of the local races I did keep trying to attack and get away and this  helped the rest of the season with the National races.  My  road season also consisted of lots of TTs and some I did quite well in and some didn’t go quite so well. But this year I set my quickest 10 and 25 mile TT time with the 10 mile TT time being 23.30, which I was quite happy with for my age, and my 25 mile TT best time was 1.03.52 on the Middleton course.

I also contested in the club races at Mallory Park which were quite fun.  I found it quite enjoyable racing against the amount of people that showed up and also supported the idea of doing the races at Mallory. The final part of my summer consisted of Summer Series CX races at the MK Bowl. These were fun races where the youths started 1 minute behind the seniors which made the race more enjoyable and challenging trying to catch the seniors.

The final part of my year consisted of some National and league CX races which all had a mixture of weather conditions, some being dry some being wet and muddy with one race that we had a bit of snow in places on the course at the East Mids Championship race. My best CX National result this year was 40th and I was still pleased with this as I didn’t have a great start but also had two mechanicals which meant that I lost quite a bit of time.  I am hoping that with the results I have achieved in the LCXL league that I can win the league for the 2nd time with me being a Junior next CX season.

Next year i hope to race in all of the National road series as well as hopefully a lot of the club time trials and hopefully race FNSS again. I am also looking at doing a few regional races as well at Mallory, Darley Moor and Leicester college. I thank the club for all the support that they have given me this year.