Ian P's 2014 season summary:

With 2014 came a big birthday and with my 60^th year starts a new age band in mountain bike racing, the sad thing is that I remember the same opportunity at 40 and 50. At 40, I was starting to get podiums with an odd win but by the time I was 50 I was getting more successful. My 50^th year started well I won the first race but the second involved a heavy crash whilst leading and a badly broken collarbone and a difficult recovery.

So my 60^th year arrived, I had still been competitive in the grand vet 50-59 class but I knew to win you have to finish. Winter 2013 training involved lots of long road rides with coffee and cake and entering the 4 race Brass Monkey series in the new 3 hour grand vet class .which I had 3^rd, 3^rd, 4^th, 6^th (bit of mechanical issues in the last round) to finish the series in 3^rd place behind friends Steve Jones and Rob Jackson.

I then entered the Gorrick Spring series in the Super Vet 60+ class. I have raced with Andy Roberts for years and he too had entered his 60^th year and had just come 5^th in the world CX champs so I was expecting a good race but to my surprise I won by several minutes, the same followed for rounds 2 and 3 and the series win. I found the Gorrick races far to short as they consisted of only 2 laps so to add a bit of distance I always did a couple of warm-up laps and sometimes a warm down lap chasing the Grand Vets. For the future I now have permission to enter the Super Vet 40+ 4 lap races.

Next up was the Southern XC series; this had 5 rounds and a separate Southern Championship race. Generally this is a great series with a good range of tracks; to me the track that needs improving is Checkendon. With the SXC came a bit more competition with Tony Wilkins from the Eastern region looking for ranking points. Like Andy he is also new to the Super Vet class and like Andy is a very good Cross and Crit racer. The series went well with 5 wins and the Southern Championship.

Over the years I have often entered the odd National Point Series (NPS) race but have never done the whole 5 race series and National Championship Title race. The NPS had Tony, Andy, and another newbie Lin Lines from Wales and highly respected international racer Vic Barnett (2^nd in 2014 worlds in the 65-agecategory and former world Champion). The first race was in the Eastern region, I didn’t know what to expect so at the start I slotted in behind Lin for a few hundred meters and thought I can go faster and won by more than 3 minutes. I continued this winning steak at all 5 rounds. Best race was Redruth in Cornwall, I had 2 punctures, both went flat but sealed with the Stans tubeless latex and just needed inflating and luckily I had 2 CO2 canisters with me. Lin got in front both times but I got the win by just 9 seconds. The worse track and not worthy of the NPS series was Sherwood Pines, as easy win but a lot of travelling for not much of a challenge. Best tracks Redruth and Cannock Chase.

So far I had had a great year not loosing a single race but it went wrong at the National Championships at Hopton. There were a few new faces, one being Roy Hunt who had unbeknown to me also turned 60, Roy had been national champion 6 times in 11 years and I had never beaten him and Hopton was the same, I came 2^nd by a margin! But hey silver in theBritish Cycling National Championships isn’t bad.

Still a good year with almost a perfect race record.

1^st Gorrick Spring series (1^st round 1, 2 and 3)

1^st Sothern XC series (1^st in all 5 rounds)

1^st Southern Championship

1^st British Cycling National Point Series (1^st in all 5 rounds)

2^nd British Cycling National Championships

No1 British cycling ranking Super Vet

A lot of races and a lot of travelling all completed on my trusty Trek Superfly SL with Sram XX1, XTR brakes and either Roval or Strada carbon wheels.

Ian Petherbridge.