Thursday 9 June 2011

Fort William World Cup - 4th and 5th June 2011

Hi everyone, Angie here!

After a beautiful drive up through the Scottish Borders and Glen Coe we got to Fort William on the Thursday before the weekend’s World Cup Race. Got signed on straight away, donned the boots and went for a wander up the track with everything looking sweet, dry n’ dusty.


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

On looking back, one of the things I learned from last year’s race was not to tire myself out so limited myself to 3 practice runs and sectioned the bits in the woods. Felt completely in my element and was loving the course however was finding it hard to get my head around the big drop. It seems a lot of the European and Canadian girls, and obviously the seasoned Pro’s, have much more confidence on this type of drop because of the terrain and trails where they live/race on. Here in the UK there is limited access to trails like this and I know that I'm definitely going to work on stuff like this from now on. So that’s a trip to France for me sorted out at the end of the month….. I’m a-gonna nail me some big drops. :)

The practice went well and I was feeling pretty quick. Walked the track again on Friday night just to check out some lines and make sure I was hitting the right ones.

Got two practice runs in on Saturday morning, hitting all the lines I wanted to, shot through the woods fast and clean, was feeling pretty happy with myself.

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

My qualifying run came around and I was pretty on it until I hit the deck on a stupid loose corner up top, jumped back on quickly and got away again. With trying to make up the lost time I pushed too hard in the bottom section of the woods and came off again, felt absolutely f**king gutted.

With all that said and done I did pull some positives from the weekend; I LOVE my new purple Burgtec pedals, they are super grippy, a big “THANK YOU” going out to the Burgtec guys, you rock!! And I love my new Sun-Ringle wheels too, can you tell I’m a very happy bunny here? I hit a lot of the track faster than I ever have done in the past so I'm really happy about that, a lighter bike certainly helps matters. And of course….. total respect going out to Danny Hart for his 2nd place, you ruled the weekend!

Now there’s the work to be done on the big drops! (These mental notes have been taken down in Biro on several Post-its and are now stuck on my forehead!).

I will get some GoPro helmet cam footage uploaded shortly from the practice runs, there may be some more surprise GoPro footage too but I’m not tellin’ you all just yet!

Next weekend is the Dunkeld SDA, very excited, nice and technical, pray for good weather! See y’all there!

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