I was lucky enough to be allowed to ride the course on the Saturday with a few others and I took my Sister along and tried to teach her how to ride a bike a bit better technically.
The Course
The course was a mountain bike Harvey Dent. The first half of the lap was an old quarry which featured lots of super fun, super flowy single track with optional jump lines. The singletrack was broken up by steep 3 arrow technical sections.
On the contrary, the early part of the second half of the lap was gravely fire road and the end quarter of the lap was incredibly bumpy woodland which was difficult to keep speed over.
The best course of the season so far!!
Looking at the start list on the Sunday, I noticed the absence of big players John Whittington (3.5 hours away), Sean Frost (road racing) and Luke Eggar (being a Muppet)
This meant that I had the best chance possible of a podium in a South West series race. It would be a fight between myself, fellow team mate Harry Smith, good friend Steve Hodge of Shred Racing and James Horton from Cannondale Racing.
Harry was first into the single track after a loose stoney hill start, James Horton was 2nd, Steve 3rd and the Southfork Junior rider Ed Welsh pipped me into 4th. Thankfully for me he punctured about a mintue later so I didn't lose any time on Steve and James.
By the first technical section, Harry had a gap with me, Steve and James squabbling amongst ourselves.
It stayed like that for the first lap with Harry not getting too far ahead. Now that we had settled I was able to take the jump lines on the first set of single track to earn some air miles and have some fun.
We stayed stuck in our position until the second half of the second lap when James decided to bridge the gap to Harry whilst Steve eeked just far enough ahead of me to put some back markers between us going into the single track and escaped.
I carried on pushing hard but had a lull on the third lap and dropped 30 seconds on Steve but carried on pushing and perked up again, only losing 2 seconds to him on the fourth lap. However as predicted I lost 30 seconds more time on the last lap as my lack of race fitness kicked in.
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