Round 2 has come and gone already and what a round it was!
-Our set up and Mojo pic’s
We rolled up to the venue around midday Friday and set up the REZURGENCE easy-up. Weather was good! It was a very long and steep walk to the top of the mountain. The course was seriously steep in many sections and very rocky. All the rocks were loose and would constantly be changing. It was also very technical with most corners being between tight trees. It was very fast but when speed was scrubbed off it was done very dramatically, there were a few sections that reached around 35mph but you needed to slow down to about 5mph in just a few seconds. There were some harsh braking bumps as a consequence. The very bottom of the course was the only part not wooded. This consisted of a ski jump, 2 berms, a hip jump, 2 flat corners and a few compressions to the finish. It was such a complicated and technical track I walked it again to attempt to learn it.
-The course
Saturday morning was an early start as the uplift started at 8:30. No 2 mile ride to the uplift this year either; Just a ride across the field to the road. It was dry still and the course was riding dusty. The uplift was pretty slow and I only got about 5 runs in before my seeding run.
-Chilling at Simons van listening to some tunes!
I had hit all the lines in practise that I wanted to and was anxious to know how I compared on a course that I can’t practise on anything like it at home. My seeding run went well I thought. I took it easy and just hit all my lines. I came down to get 4th place with a 3min 17 sec’s. I was happy with this and knew I could cut the time down in my race run.
-The ski jump
I walked the course after watching the last riders do there seeding runs. I found many more lines that seemed to have changed and appeared during practise. I was confident if all went well I would be able to shave off about 10 seconds on a pretty good run.
I got a lift to Summerfields with Ross Hamond, Sam Shucksmith and Mark Blackler to get something to munch on. It turned out that Ross went back in to the toilet, little did he know he was about to be locked in the loo’s in the shopping centre. Haha! We all grabbed a pizza on the way back and went to bed.
Sunday was another early start of 8:30 practise. I set out to do 2 runs; one run to ride my new lines and one to do a practise race run. They both went according to plan and I had plenty of time to spare so I went up to watch. I was very surprised to see that a corner had been changed and an inside line was opened. I thought that this was really off; you can’t just change a course 2 hours before racing commences! It looked as though it would be faster just cruising through it rather than pinning the outside so I planned to hit it first time in my race run.
-Some pic’s of me
Going up for my race run was totally different this time, I wasn’t nervous at all! I just knew that this was it and I was going to get down fast but without pushing what I hadn’t already practised at a certain speed. And after all I couldn’t do much worse than my first result at Ae Forest. I did what I wanted to do in my run but I missed a crucial line near the start as I hit the wrong line before it. But I had a good run and came down ending up in 6th place with a 3 min 11sec’s. Just off the podium! Dam it!
-A video of Mojo rider; Ben Cathro doing the step down
Thanks to DMR, Rezurgence, Lifestyle Ford, Mojo, Mace, Nike 6, Twenty26, Geax and Motor Tabs.
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