Huntsman Barton- March 25th 2007

I don’t know what it was about today, but I didn’t feel ‘up for it’, maybe because I’d had a late one (gig) the night before.

Arrived at the venue ok, done all the necessary and off we went on our sighting lap.
Nice course, nothing to technical, some fast field stretches, a stream with a few rocks in it, nice woods, a little tricky rooty climb that wasn’t too severe and a small jump where quite a few spectators were gathered.

Flag dropped and off we went, yet again I started somewhere in the middle of the pack, not really a good thing to do as after only about 200 yards there was a bottleneck that slowed things down considerably as everyone was trying to get through a gap with only room enough for one bike.
Got a bit held up there.

Coming out of the corners and into the fast open stretches, I hadn’t much grip due to the fact that I really should have put a new back tyre on, it was well worn, I thought the tyre would be ok, but it wasn’t, my fault entirely, another little piece of inexperience on my part.

Went into the pits at halfway to refuel and to change my goggles and fill my mouth as always with Jelly babies.
Couldn’t see my girlfriend anywhere, never mind, off back out I went to do the reminder of the race.

Finished ok with no real problems today.
A big round of applause surely must go to the young ladies who stood at the lap scoring area for the entire race cleaning our numbers. Well done girls.

I did have a laugh when Marie told me that she went back to the car to eat her sandwiches and promptly fell asleep for about an hour and a half, missing me when i stopped to refuel (well she is pregnant bless her).

Finishing position: 13/37
Bike status: new back tyre
Injuries: none