last weekend I was representing wales in the inter regional MTB event 2015.
I woke up early morning on Friday to be picked up by our coach to take us down to Essex, Hadleigh farm where the event was.
on the Friday we had a skills competition which involved doing many different skills including bunny hops, wheelies and side hops under pressure and against the clock, I finished 5th overall and only picking up 1 time penalty for hitting a post.
on Saturday we had the handicap race in the morning which was done on the number of time penalties you had accumulated from yesterday and each one being 10seconds, this meant I started 10seconds behind the 3 people that managed to clear the course,
I had a good start and was working well in a group but I had been ill for a few days before and it was affecting me abit, people were coming past me and I just wasn't able to attack ad stay with them, in the end I came through 10th
in the afternoon we had dirt crits which involved a series of heats of races that lasted around 2minutes in duration, my first heat went well and I managed to qualify coming through 2nd, my next heat didn't go as well and just missed out on qualifying after missing my pedal at the start and coming in 8th while only the top 7 go through to the next round, this meant I went through to the B final, I had a good start and went through into the bottle neck in 5th, I struggled to get past on the descent and had to try and move up on the flat, after a sprint finish I managed to claim 3rd in my final heat
the Sunday was our final day and it kicked off with a team relay in the morning which team wales won last year and we would hope to do the same again this year, I had the first leg of the relay and I had a good start coming through 2nd on the short 5minute course handing over to Megan James to take on the second leg of the race, Megan came through 3rd and first girl before then handing over to Katie hesdon who would take the third leg of the tea relay for us she came through 4th and then handed over to Solomon kerfoot robson for the 4th and final leg of the race, sol managed to make up some ground after some teams had decided to use their 2 boys first, he and harry yates came through together and after a hard battle harry sprinted past sol and he couldn't react, we held on to 2nd and we all did a great team effort
in the afternoon it was the main event which was the XCO race, after a good warm up and feeling abit better I was ready for the final event, I had a good start sitting within the top 5 and already 8 of us had managed to get away from the rest o the filed on lap 1 which was very unusual to have a big group like this all still together after one lap, we all stayed together for the next lap tackling all the Olympic descents and climb and I was feeling comfortable and strong, however, on lap 3 disaster struck on the oak tree drop with my chain dropping, I quickly stopped and tried to get it back on as quickly as possible, but the leading group had gone and 2 others had past me, over the next lap I managed to work my way back to the duo that had past me while I had dropped my chain and try to chase back on the lead group, but again on the 4th my chain dropped again on Deane's drop and I had to stop and put it back on again, while I was doing this another big group past me and I couldn't get back onto them for the next 2 remaining laps, I started to blow up after having to constantly chase for the majority of the race due to my own silly mistakes, after dropping my chain twice and bonking I came across the line 18th which was not the result I had hoped for in my final MTB race as an U16 but it was still an amazing weekend and a big thanks to welsh cycling for allowing me the chance to represent my country. I now look forward to next years MTB season and cant wait to get racing again on the MTB
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