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| Me chasing super fast Elite rider Luke Eggar |
On arrival we walked up to the start and registered. Just standing in the queue at registration and my feet were sunk in several inches of mud, the amount of water cascading off the hillside was unbelievable!
Having never raced at Margam before I got the bike ready and did a quick reccie lap. The track was quite technical and pretty steep in places but also soaking wet with a lot of thick sloppy mud.
After cleaning up the bike we went and watched the first race and spotted some better line choices on a few of the more technical sections as the track got more and more beaten up.
The rain was still hammering down, we were soaked through and it was freezing cold so we headed back to the van to get ready for the race.
Soon enough it was time to get racing and being a downhiller myself it was super cool to find that I was lined up on the start line behind the Elites which included none other than Atherton/GT Bikes World Cup downhiller Marc Beaumont!
So off we went, the starting pace was fast and I settled for 8th position off the line and quickly got into a good rhythm during the first climb. Had a great battle swapping positions with Marc Beaumont until I managed to pull a gap at the top of the climb.
First lap went really well as I made my way up through the field and onto the back wheel of the current Junior National Champion. I followed him through the last muddy section of the lap, which had to be run, and once we got back on our bikes I took a high line that I spotted earlier and made the pass which took me up into overall third position.
Once past him I had extended the gap to around 13 secs by the time I crossed the start/finish line to began lap 2.
I then managed to get into second place overall whilst working hard to create a substantial gap to the Junior National Champion on the climb but unfortunately riding slightly off the main line I rolled over a stick and managed to smash up my rear mech which ended up in my spokes, jamming up the rear wheel......race over! Was pretty stoked that Marc Beaumont acknowledged my efforts as he passed by though :)
Although I didn't get the result I was looking for today the main reason for racing was to gauge where I was at, so it's great to know I was very competitive having got the third fasted lap time of the day and that my fitness is looking strong for this years Nationals....can't wait - bring them on!
Big thanks to Maddie and Jay @ Fully Sussed for organising and running yet another great event which ran like clockwork even though the weather tried it's best to make things difficult!
Oh, and as you can probably see I've seriously upped my power to weight ratio since my last race......was pretty simple really, I've had a major haircut :)