It was an eventful weekend starting off with a 5hour drive down to Plymouth, we arrived around 11:00 which gave me time to get my number and relax for abit before heading out for three practise laps of what pictures and videos I had seen looked like a great course. the first practise lap went well and I rode all the A lines Really comfortably and wasn't really struggling, except for the climbs, they were really steep and if you got out the saddle your rear wheel would slip on the loose ground that had been baking in the hot dry weather all week. I headed out for my second practise lap just to make sure about thinking of switching down to a 30T ring on my 1x10 set up. on the second lap I did again ride all the A lines comfortably at abit of a higher pace except for the final A line (cottage Carnage) where I managed to end up flying over the bars going straight through the tape and landing on my head in the process and making myself see stars for a while but after 5 minutes I decided to go back up and hit the A line again and ended up going over the bars again probably due to I didn't give myself enough time to calm down after the first one. In this crash I managed to break my seat in the process snapping the rails meaning that I would have to go back to the car to get that sorted out and to make sure I was also ok as I was feeling sore and did take a massive blow to my head which I later found out I had also found out I broke my helmet as well leaving a massive crack in the top of it, but to make things worse I didn't bring a spare helmet or seat but was lucky enough that a friend of ours had a spare seat, but this still meant that we needed to get a helmet as the paramedics said it was not good enough to use again as if I crashed again with it, it would not do its job, this meant we had to go to certini the local bike shop to newnham park to find a new helmet.
After about half an hour of looking round the numerous helmets I managed to find a helmet to my liking and then we headed back to newnham park, changed the ring from a 32T to a 30T. this made the climbs much easier and I again rode all the A lines comfortably and this time at Cottage Carnage i took it slower and made sure I got down it safely and then built my speed up over the next couple of runs down before heading back to the car feeling confident with all the A lines.
On race day it looked like good weather and I was feeling good, I started my warm up on rollers and moved through the zones getting me up to speed that the race will be at.
I was gridded on the front row again which would give me a great starting position.
The gun went and everyone clipped in, except me which also meant I went from the front of the race to the back and was sitting dead last, I was then left with the job of moving up back into the top 10 which I managed to do coming through the main arena and was chasing back to the group for 5th, the 5 of us stayed together for the majority of the race until tomos mein put in a dig on the main steep climb and my legs couldn't react and I was out of gears because the hill was so steep, I tried to chase back to them on the descents but the gap was just too big to catch back up to them but I still pushed on as there were people still chasing from behind but I managed to hold onto 10th.
I was satisfied with this result but I am hoping for better at the next round of BMBS at forest fields in wales.
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