The guys from Racing 795 are a really good bunch so I was looking forward to their Leinster League XC race in Bunclody. It was a race I enjoyed last year with a long fireroad climb and some nice double and technical single track on a really nice sunny day!
This year looked really promising too with lovely weather all week and reports of a dusty, dry course filtered back from the MAD crew who went down for a sneaky practice session on the Saturday before the race! Unfortunately it wasn’t to be and it started to rain on the Saturday evening, lashed all night and into Sunday morning. By the time we arrived in Bunclody the rain had stopped and the rain had started to clear but the ground was very wet!
While I’ve been training all winter it’s been mainly on the road and at the best of times I’m technically pretty inept so I wasn’t much looking forward to a sloppy technical track! Since last year there had been a few new bits added to the course and while they would have been great on a dry day, for me, they were pretty well unrideable in places!
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| Not a bad start! |
I had a tough race and after a reasonable 1st climb I basically went backwards from there! I found the technical sections a real struggle and never got any sort of a rest – on a wet difficult course when I hit the technical sections, even the downhill ones, my heart rate increases rather than decrease like most people!
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| I managed to stay ahead of Orla ..... but only for a while! |
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| I wasn't the only one struggling! |
I can’t say I enjoyed it much but that was a reflection on me rather than the course! The only consolation was that I managed to stay ahead of PaddyB from MAD who was having an equally bad day. I eventually finished 37th out of 62 starters so hardly a resounding success but not last either! We had some great Epic results with a number of people finishing on the podium - including Orla, Simon (x2), Damien and Darragh!
Anyway it’s good to be back racing and I’m looking forward to the start of the NPS series!
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