We arrived in plenty of time so watched the Juvenille and Youth races before getting ready for a warm up around the Senior's course.
The course was really good, making great use of the natural banking around the various sports pitches, providing some tech features which when combined with the slippery conditions proved very tricky to ride.
I'd changed the set up of my bike (see previous post) for this race, swapping the the SID suspension forks for a set of rigid carbon forks....whilst this has made the bike a bit more efficeint to pedal and lighter it has also dropped the bottom bracket height which meant I was clipping my pedals a lot when peddling out of corners.....oh well just had to get on with it :(
Race time....I was gridded so managed a great start off the line. I fought hard and my pace was good and had no problems keeping with the faster Seniors but I need to work on my mounting and dismounting skills as this is where I was suffering and lost some time and places. Tim Carpenter (eliteVelo) kindly suggested I tuck in beind him as he went passsed so we hatched a plan to use a bit of teamwork to try and reel in the next rider ahead.
In the end I overtook Tim and took the Junior win and 6th position in the Seniors race so pretty happy with that :) Provisional results and full race report can be found here
Was a great days racing on a very good race course so a big thank you to everyone concerned....next stop Round 8 - South West Champs, Ashburton next weekend....maybe see you there.
