By Matthew Thorne
The weather was as usual wet, cold and windy and signing on may as well have been in a different country! It was so far away from the car and the marathon of a walk was made twice as bad by the fact the road leading up to it had more water on it than concrete! Resulting in people and bikes dodging about the whole length of it. Enough of the moaning for now! The racing was fantastic and the atmosphere was great considering the amount of mud and water that seemed to get absolutely everywhere! The course was very muddy which made it a lot more technical to ride. On the first lap, before the field had spread, it was just a line
of riders strung out on the first climb up the singletrack. The first bit of
technical descent was a straight rocky section which wasn't particularly steep
but had enough loose rocks to give you something to think about! Having the
bonus of a full suspension MTB with powerful brakes is that there's no need to brake
too early, but obviously the spectators standing at the bottom of the descent didn't know that when they all scrambled to the sides with a look of shock on their faces - when I started screaming at the bloke in front who decided he wanted to stop and walk the last bit! The last sections of the course was just mud, mud and you guessed it, more mud!! On the first lap a rider came flying face first past my shoulder and straight into a wet, gooey puddle of mud and I laughed, probably loud enough for him to hear (ooopsy)!! But Karma got me back on my second lap as I suffered the same fate as he had and went straight over the bars and got a face full of dirt! overall a fantastic race!!!!!
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