On arrival the carpark was already busy which was a good sign as it meant a lot of entrants for this race - 55 racers in the Seniors race.
Did a warm up lap of the track and the course was very open with long straights and not much tech.....the bike felt OKish so I decided to stick with my mtb tyre setup but probably should have changed to my skinny CX tyres.
So time to race....and because of my 4th place finish in the last race I got seeded on the front row of the grid, sweet!
I went off hard at the start and throughout the first lap, trying to keep pace with Matt Loake. This worked for a bit but I was struggling to maintain any speed on the long straights as the ground was very soft and was sapping all my energy.....I really wished I had changed tyres!
I got passed by another rider who managed to tangle bars with me which meant then being over taken by a pack of riders as we untangled so my second and third laps were not great and I was not happy.
Seeing the other Junior riders begin to catch I then settled down and got back on it. I started to pick up the pace again and managed to put in some solid lap times and pull out and maintain a reasonable gap.
In the end I took the Juniors win and 10th place in the Seniors....but more importantly, for me anyway, was that I was only 44 secs beind Matt Loake ;) Full race results can be found here.
Stover is a lovely race location so a big thanks to everyone for organising another great day of racing!
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| Pre-race photo |
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| 55 Riders line up at the start |
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| End of a fast Lap 1 |
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| Lap 2 - Ruined but still charging |
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| Lap 3 or 4 - Getting back on it |
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| Celebrating the Junior win with a wheelie over the finish line |
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| Post race discussions |