Delapre Abbey MTB Race Highlights: James Swadling’s Victory

Delapre Abbey Round 1

The first Friday of May welcomed the start of the 2023 UK Friday Night Summer Series Mountain Bike racing in Delapre Abbey Northampton. Our very own James Swadling was “rider ready”, towed the start line and eventually took the “W”. Let’s take a closer look at how he achieved this feat…

The Course / The Bike / The Pilot:

Delapre Abbey is one of the more technical courses: challenging but exciting. James opted for the KTM Scarp MT from FLiDistribution to tackle this XC course and it turned out to be a very wise choice indeed. The bike handled everything that came it’s way, notwithstanding this, a rider still needs to be a capable pilot to be successful in MTB XC racing. You simply can’t buy a win by having the most expensive bike on the start line. There are so many factors that play pivotal roles: racing experience, fitness, injuries, bike selection etc etc.

Race Prep:

James completed a couple of sighting laps, practised a few of the more tricky sections a handful of times to dial his lines in, then final hydration prep with a low strength carbohydrate drink and made his way to the startline.

The Start:

A body of eager mean looking fast MTB racers towed the line in the large open field with leg sapping long grass. James rode down his competitors from the gun by starting hard and fast averaging 601w for the first minute with a peak of 1250w.

Full gas off the start

This allowed him to exit the field in pole position and tackle the more technical aspects of the course and the climb through the trees.

Race Tactics:

The string start allowed him to gain pole position right from the start which gave him clear ground to negotiate the more technical aspects of the course and a tough climb through the trees. The tactics were simple: James’s instructions were to go as hard as he could from the off, lead from the start and keep going hard until the end of the race. Our aim was to keep the pace high to make it hard for other riders to close the gap. James followed the instructions to the tee. James continued to attack the punchy climbs until he created to extend his lead over the chasing riders.

Developing Race Skills while on the job:

We also spoke about improving his bike handling skills and he was working hard to be as smooth as he could when negotiating flowy descents and to make sure to kick hard out of the corners to try and get out of sight and maintain racing momentum. Don’t touch your brakes on the slippy bridge!

The W

By the end of the first lap he managed to increase the gap to 25 sec. However, even with a decent gap we wanted James to keep pushing hard to get the most out of the race from a race fitness perspective, as we are building for some bigger race goals over the next weeks.

For the rest of the race James maintained his lead and extended his advantage over the chasing riders by continuing to attack the punchy climbs, which was getting tough towards the end of the race as fatigue was setting in.

My KTM Scarp MT from FLiDistribution

After an hour of racing James finished just under 2 minutes ahead of the next rider with a normalised power of 349w and pretty sore legs!

The Journey ahead:

We hope you enjoyed reading this snippet of what it’s like to be an mtb racer. The NP MTB Race Team plans to share more about what it takes to win an MTB race in the coming weeks, months, and years.

A big shout out to Nottingham Clarion Cycling Club, KTM MTB, and the FNSS MTB team for hosting a fantastic event. The team looks forward to seeing everyone at round 2 this Friday.

Stay tuned for the next MTB race blog.

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