Hope Series 2 Lee Quarry - Race 2

From Hope Series 2 Lee Quarry - Race 1 - Sept 2009

The second race weekend came around quite quickly and with around three weeks of regular riding (2 to 3 times per week) I hoped to make an improved ride this race.

The race organisers had changed the route this time round, some of the original course still existed though which would be impossible to remove, like the starting hill which spaces people out nicely before the first singletrack and the downhill / cattlegrid section towards to starting area. The newer sections were towards the middle of the lap and reasonably tricky, I'm sure one part was actually vertical right before and 90 degree right hand berm/turn.

I felt the consistent riding I'd been doing over the recent few weeks paid off as I started quite brightly. Only to wonder whether burning myself out of lap one would actually be the best way to improve on last time...?

The end of the first lap felt like I'd gone off way too fast and following that with a lap of reasonable pace, I wondered if the third lap, like last time, would just hurt my lungs and legs again.

Yep, it did! Lap 3 started to hurt.

But, this time, I was able to take a bit more time to recover on the next lap or so. By lap 4 I was getting back into it. I was going up hills slower by now, but for some bizarre reason I was able to clean the up-hills without getting off and pushing, in fact completed an entire lap completely clean. I fully expected at the end of lap 4 to hear the welcome sound of the last lap bell, except it wasn't there. The range of emotions at this point was weird...thinking it was probably the end of my energy levels, but yet knowing that I'm likely to get a better result compared to Race 1, I wanted to try to kick on.

So, lap 5 was back to some pushing up hills again, but with the marshalls giving great encouragement that the end must be reasonably close, I did think I was likely to get to the end of the race at lap 5 (I thought I must have just missed the bell and the leaders would be past me at any time). As I closed in on the end of lap 5, I did get the final lap bell and knew I'd managed to get that extra lap. Even though it was going to be a hard lap 6, the bell was still very welcome and gave a great extra morale boost.

It turned out to be a good tactic to start as fast as possible, just getting that early position in the whole field and trying to keep that going helped me to keep a high enough pace to improve. Without seeing the lap times and positions, it's difficult to judge how well I did and if other people improved also as I feel I have, so time will tell on the result. Trail Guru link of the course.

Again this was very well run event and enjoyed the whole experience better the second time round as I knew (basically) what I was doing. It would have been better if people didn't go home back down the track when the race was still running (presuming they'd crossed the line and finished already), I know there were a few behind myself who might have had this problem too.

I'm looking forward to seeing the race lap times and finish position later in the week.
Here is the video footage that Cath put together for me.

No photos this time, video only, but will look online to see if any of the photographers have any.

Next & final race of the series: 18th October 2009.