I went up Friday and got there in time to have a good night’s sleep before practise day... pretty rare occurrence for me, it’s usually get there and get a couple hours sleep before waking up to ride.
I got up early to walk the course and despite not having been to Bringewood in a few years I had done a similar course to what I had rode last time. I took a new approach to it and picked out some different lines that I wouldn’t have seen before.
Practise was really good fun. I really liked the course as it was all about keeping speed and pumping. It also had lots of jumps and hop’s which is pretty much what I love to do so it was great. Despite the rain over Friday night into the Saturday morning the course held up really well and the rain was holding off for the start of practise.
I got loads of runs in but didn’t really start sticking lines until it was a bit too late. It had not rained all day and the course was drying up nicely. I planned to get up early to walk the course again and concentrate on the lines that I hadn’t done yet.
With the clocks changing and having one hour less sleep I changed my alarm to go off at five...therefore it would be 6am new time. However my phone changed automatically during the night and this meant I actually got up at 5am; wasn’t happy about that!
I did 3 practise runs and managed to get my new lines, jumps and hops done with one full run down. I was pretty happy with how fast I was going and I had practised on high rollers and the course was only getting drier.
It was a long time waiting for my race run. I watched my mates all go up and come down which was kind of weird. Even stranger than that was going up with a whole 18 Elite riders. I have never seen a race besides a world cup with so many elite racers.
My first race run went pretty normally. I had a good run down with the odd mistake and stalled a little in a vital corner but apart from that it went well. I came down taking the lead which I was really happy about. And after everyone had been down I was still in 6th place. I was really pleased with this considering the people I was up against. I had proved to myself that I was worthy of the Elite category and that I have improved a fair bit. I have never been 3 seconds off of Brendan and this definitely was an achievement for me. Here’s a picture of the results;
It rained between my first and second runs but only for about a minute and the course was the same as before in no time.
My second run went a bit wrong. My feet came off the pedals in a corner and I twisted my seat perfectly 90 degrees. This was very awkward to jump with and I twisted it back with my legs when I got to the first road. I tried my hardest to gain time back and I definitely went faster but it was too much time lost. I came down a couple seconds slower and got moved to 8th place. I was still happy with my result and it made the weekend all the more worthwhile. Here is a link to the overall results; http://www.pearcecycles.co.uk/files/pcss10_bringewood_280310_-_overall_ranking.pdf
Here are some pictures of race day;
Thanks go to Rich for his entre, Last, Rezurgence, Lifestyle Ford, 2026 distribution, DMR, Funn, 661, Maxxis, KMC, Lezyne, Mojo suspension and Shimano.
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