An early season chance to race took me and my mate Craig to BPW for a mashup version on gravity enduro hosted by Welsh gravity Enduro. I like this type of racing as it allows you to repeat stages as many times as you like in the allotted time in attempt to set your fastest possible time. It also encourages you let it all hang out knowing you can have another go if you make any time consuming mistakes.
This particular race had three stages between 1-3 minutes long with a 4 hour window to set your fastest three accumulated times.
Second run down was fast with only two rooty slow moments. Pedal back up via the live timing van, good news I’d got the fastest time, but the fat lady hadn’t sung. So only Die hard left to ride before we’d set a time for all three stages.
The conditions were crazy throughout the day, the cold dry wind now blowing sandy dust across the fire road climb and the sun popping out through the heavy cloud just for a few minutes. No doubt we left the best stage to last, ‘Die hard’, a sprint into the trees huck the doubles and carry your speed through the tight S bends. Pre jump, pump and ride the bucking bronco all the way to the finish. That was wild!!
Convinced I’d be on the box we called it a day and dropped down to the visitors centre with only 40 minutes racing left
4th bloody place, the worst position to come in and only 2.8 seconds off the win.
A long drive home thinking a lot of ‘what ifs’ but I can take confidence that my bike two years on is still an amazing race weapon and I’m mixing it with the fast boys having had a fairly low intensity winter training. Bring on next weekend where I pull out the Dh bike for Pearce Cycles race at Kinsham. Big thanks to Robbie and Dave for the continued support and getting my bike up to standard for racing in 2018.