When top UK gravel rider Jenson Young heads to the UCI Gravel World Championships in Limburg, the Netherlands next week, he won't exactly be riding for fun – but after a recent run of superb results, the pressure will be decidedly off.
He has knocked it out of the park this season, achieving all his goals – including the UK's most epic cyclo-cross race, the 3 Peaks Cyclo-Cross, where he saw off none other than Lachlan Morton on the way to victory.
"The start list this year was stronger than the past fair few years that I've known it," said the Ribble Outliers rider. "So it's definitely better sharing the podium with, like, Lachlan, for sure. And yeah, it's obviously amazing to win."
Young also set a new course record, which he said he hoped would stand for some time and "made it even better". It took some effort, with the 24-year-old averaging 184bpm for almost three hours.
The 3 Peaks is 61km long (38 miles) and is more akin to a tough mountain bike ride than your common-or-garden playing-field cyclo-cross event, with plenty of the 400-odd participants taking more than five hours over it. Riders tackle the three mountain ascents of Ingleborough, Whernside and Pen-y-Ghent in the Yorkshire Dales, England, and six kilometres (four miles) of it is designated unrideable hike-a-bike.
Young's new record of 2:49:17 saw him best EF Education-EasyPost rider Morgan by nearly four-and-a-half minutes, with third-placed Cameron Orr (Hope Tech Factory Racing) finishing another three minutes in arrears.
For his part, Lachlan Morton said on social media that the event was "pure chaos and love and I’ll be back every year I can".
The result certainly cleared up some unfinished business for Young, who was second in the event last year behind winner Giles Drake.
"I was asking people for time gaps the whole way around because there's no way of knowing how far people are behind you in a race like that," he explained. "I obviously knew that there was some really good, strong riders behind me, but I think once I got a gap up the first peak, Ingleborough, I just thought that from there I just had to ride my own race, be smooth on the ascents and and then sort of ride it as a bit of a time trial. I was still giving everything."
"I had no time to rest," he continued. "I didn't know how far anyone was behind me, so I don't think I ever relaxed. I was always pushing as hard as I could. It's pretty extreme and physical. You've got the descents to think about too, which you need a full-suspension mountain bike for, really, it's not built for a 'cross bike.
"When you're going down them, you're holding on to your bars, and your hands are cramping up. My heart rate was still high cos I was having near misses. It's so mentally tiring on the descents because you get so shaken up. It's just flat out."
It was another fine result for Young, who was also victorious in the recent Welsh UCI gravel event Graen Cymru, as well as winning the recent British Gravel Championship time trial at Dalby Forest and coming fourth in the elite men's mass-start event.
His win in the 3 Peaks event was far from the serendipitous by-product of some good form though. He trained hard – and specifically – for it.
He prepared, he says, "specifically what I didn't do last year that I struggle on, like fast walking up steps with the bike. I spent a lot of time in the hills with a weight vest.
"I think overall, it just made my fatigue resistance and strength on the bike, especially after a number of hours, a lot better," he added. "So it's definitely benefited me. It's just a lot of sacrifices you've got to make to be able to do all that."
The events he has already done well in this year gave him the confidence that he could take a result at the 3 Peaks, says Young, and he will now hope to ride that wave at Limburg this Sunday (October 12).
"I'm just gonna go out and enjoy it and get stuck in," he said. "My form recently has been pretty good, so hopefully I'll feel as good as I've done the past few weeks. I'll just go and enjoy it and like, whatever happens happens, and no pressure if I don't get a result.
With his gravel season finished, he will return to his first love – cyclo-cross – to keep him sharp over the winter, including National Trophy and British Championship events, before heading back into the gravel fray in March.
