Cameron Mason finished 21st at the UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships last Sunday in a disappointing race for the four-time British champion.
“I tend to perform by accident, as a byproduct of shooting for something else, chasing a different feeling or going down another path,” Mason wrote in an Instagram post this week after the race in Hulst, the Netherlands on Sunday. “A result on paper doesn’t do it for me most of the time. But it is the thing that matters in professional sport.”
Mason has recently focused his training more heavily towards off-road, with a greater dependence on gym and strength training to cope with the bursts of energy needed to tackle a cross course.
“I know how to train, recover, suffer, race, eat, sleep etc, and I know how to perform,” he continued. “But I don’t know how to do this all the time, at every race, on all the big days. Even though I know a lot about the things that make me perform, it’s in the small amount of unknowns that I have spent weeks looking into, analysing and worrying about.”
Mason has reassured his fans that his memory is short, and that success and knock-backs are all part of the sport. “I’m learning that you have to love the puzzles and unknowns in between all the fun bits,” he added. “That is what makes me hungry to turn up and keep trying.”
