Harry Molloy: Caersws Cup round 2;

We got to Caersws around 1am Saturday morning and went to sleep for little part of the morning left.

Waking up early I walked the course with my dad and good mate; Mark Blackler. Walking up the course I was surprised to see that the bottom section of the course was the same as the first round. The middle and top section however were totally different and I had not ridden the middle section before. It was steep and technical with some very high speed sections throughout the course.

The weather was cloudy and it had rained the night before practise day. The course was not really all that wet but enough spray was created to make everyone pretty muddy. I left about ¾ hour into practise as I knew it was going to change quickly and dry up. I did 3 runs cruising down to get my lines and stopped for lunch. I had everything planned out in my head; after last week’s tragedy I have learnt that organisation is very important. After a relaxed lunch I did another 3 runs to speed up the lines. The course was getting dusty patches by now so I took another break to gather my thoughts. I had the course pretty sorted now so I went up for my last 2 runs of practise and treated them as race runs. All in all, practise went pretty well.

Dad cooked up another one of his pasta “with everything in it” stir fry’s after we walked the course again. After a fiddle here and there on the bike I got to bed.

In the middle of the night I woke up to here rain; every racer knows that gutted feeling to here rain in the night when it’s been dry all practise day. Also in the early hours of the morning there was a massive thunder storm. It seemed to last forever and after each bang I was expecting to throw it down but it never rained at all.

We woke up to a very overcast morning but everything seemed dry still. I had it planned out that I was going to do 2 practise runs. The course was drier than ever and totally dusty. 2 runs was enough to get that bit faster and I did the bottom field section once more to get the right line. I now had a long time to rest up for race runs. I mostly listened to music and ate lots and got into the mood. It was still overcast and looked like the rain could ruin another good weekend. It started to brighten at the horizon though and I went up for my run. I said to myself that I was going to treat my first run like my only run to get used to it for the NPS. I gave it a fast and composed run down and had a pretty good run. I came in at the bottom in 2nd place. I got a 2min 29secs. I had 2 second year juniors either side of me, 4 seconds ahead and 4 seconds behind.

I went back to the van to sort my gears out because they were skipping. I soon noticed that I only had half my mech still. I had to borrow Marks mech for 2nd runs. Thanks!

After another chill out I went up on a mission. I really wanted to beat elite rider, Liam Mason. He was just under a second ahead.

-Liam Mason

I took it flat out making small mistakes at the very beginning but had the rest of the course flat out. I didn’t bother braking in the field at all and hit it real fast. I started drifting on the second to last corner and that was it... I don’t know how many 360’s I did on the grass. I got up quickly and cruised round the corner to the finish line. I was only 3 seconds slower than my first run time. Gutted! I was still 2nd place though and 6 seconds off the fastest Elite time of the day.

It was just before the expert and elite riders were to come down for their 2nd runs and it chucked it down. It was comedy watching them come through the field section. I don’t think anyone made it through without falling. I watched Liam Mason fall of on the same corner as I did which was funny. If you read this... good luck for the world cup this week!