Injuries have derailed Lucinda Brand’s cyclocross season, with the hand injury sustained at Tabor changing her objectives. With the time missed, it effectively took her out of the running of the cyclocross series – World Cup, SuperPrestige and X2O and left her focusing on individual races. With that in mind, she’s now free to race what she wants and focus on the big ones like the World Championship.
“I now mainly focus on the month of January. There are still important weeks to come. For me everything is now all about the championships,” she says in the run-up to the Exact Cross in Mol. “So I still have some time to close the gap with Fem van Empel and Puck Pieterse.
When I resumed the competition three weeks later, I had to settle for places of honour. The youngsters suddenly stood out. Partly because I didn’t get off to a good start in a few crosses.
Moreover, because I had been intensely busy with my recovery in the weeks before, I also turned out to be slightly more susceptible to germs. For example, I caught a cold at the beginning of this month, one that shocked me that it can make you so sick. A new setback. Fortunately, it had already been decided that I would do a training camp in Spain in the first weeks of December.”
Lucinda Brand
Brand begins racing again on Friday in Mol after a short break. This was to help recover from a bug which prevented her from matching the young guns who are taking the cyclocross world by storm this season. The training camp seems to have given Brand some confidence again.
“It takes some getting used to, because I haven’t touched my cross bike in recent weeks. Fortunately, the course there at the Zilvermeer is not too technical. You do need sand skills, but you can compensate for that with some extra power. I am aiming for at least a podium finish. That would be nice to start the busy Christmas period.”
