Friday 20 May 2011

SDA 1: Ae Forest 17th April 2011

The team mechanic, also known as Nick’s dad Dickie, very kindly packed the van and went up on the Friday morning so I could jump in the car and meet him there when I was finished with work later that day. It’s all about the organisation here you see!

Nick takes over: Ae Forest’s track was fairly similar to the previous ones with the exception that a new section had been cut in towards the bottom which was fairly loose and greasy, great fun to ride. As seems to be par the course with racing at Ae Forest, the track was generally dry where the soggy bits in the tree sections dried out over the weekend.

(Photo courtesy of Ian Linton, http://ianlinton.com/)

Saturday was kept fairly steady, no real issues just getting held up quite often by riders in front on the track. The bike was feeling really good, the only change I made was swapping the tyres to Maxxis Minions. These proved to work really well especially on the new loose sections. Can I add that we had the sun shining all weekend, shorts, t’shirts and shades, excellent! Now, back to the racing…..!

Only managed one practice run on Sunday morning which admittedly wasn’t the best. That said I was relaxed and feeling good for my race run.

(Photo courtesy of Ian Linton, http://ianlinton.com/)

From the start everything went well, hitting most of my lines bang on. After the rock garden I was beginning to blow out in the corners, I put it down to the root infested track getting slippy with all the riding. It soon dawned on me that the front tyre was deflating, a blasted ‘snakebite’ puncture and as a result my time wasn’t brilliant coming in at 16th in Expert.

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