Mud - Noun
Wet, soft earth or earthy matter

I understand that the Inuit language has up to 17 different words for snow and I am beginning to wonder whether the English language fully covers the variety of mud that can be encountered on a cyclocross race.

My thesaurus lists muck, ooze, slime, slop, slush & sludge but this doesnít do justice for all the surfaces you can find.
This Saturday there was a particular kind of mud that I hadnít come across before.† Under the trees where the grass was thin, the top layer of mud was churned into sticky balls.† The closest comparison† I can think of is pastry dough that† has too little water in it.



Combined with leaves and twigs this mixture gummed up wheels, chains and gears causing several riders to have to stop to clear this clag ( thereís another word for mud not in my thesaurus!)

Next weeks course at Allestree is also notorious for muddy conditions so if any of our readers can think of more synonyms for mud please post them on the forum so I have† a full complement at my disposal ( I think Iím going to need them all)

DMRC Finishers
17†† †Lee Blades
19†† †Dave Banks
31†† †Chris Blount
34†† †Pete Turner
38†† †John Holmes
46†† †Dave Luscombe
59†† †Jim Crew

Juniors
5†† †Rosie Blount
8†† †Harry Crew

Under 10
2†† †James Luscombe
13† Matthew Luscombe

More pics in the Photogallery