through the feedzone
Today was the 50km second stage of the Hexagonal. We went for a lap to familiarise ourselves with the 12.5km course and it was a complete mud fest. the rain from the previous night had soaked the ground making it the very worst kind of claggy type mud. The kind that sticks to your bike and clogs up everthing. The track was pretty fun though, i was pleaseed that there were a few really fast and slick downhill sections. I cut the lap short to get back to the car and put one the Maxxis Medusa mud tyres, perfect for this kind of stuff.
The race start through Vittel was super fast. I started from the 5th row of the grid so i had to work hard to move forward. I hit the first single track climb way too far back and got caught up in the grid lock. I rode most of the first lap on my limit, trying to stay in touch, but eventually i had to drop back to a sustainable tempo because i was affraid i would blow. The course was so much fun, we were sliding around eveywhere. I had some trouble with mud clogging up the bike but i was very careful to take and extra bottle of water each lap in order to hose the drivetrain regularly, and my bike semed to be working better that others.
After 3 laps i was still feeling pretty good and it started to pour down. This was actually a good thing becasue i makes the mud a lot wetter, and it doesn't stick to the bike so much and it is easier to ride. The last lap was awesome, i lifted up my pace and managed to reel in 5 places. The downhills, were still slick but so much fun. I was super happy to be able to finish strongly, i just have to work on my speed at the start. I ended up in 33rd. AJ was the quickest Aussie in 25th.
No comments:
Post a Comment