Monday, January 25, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Christchurch NZ Cup 1 Race Report
I packed up the car and all of myself and Edo's (my Italian friend) stuff on new years day, I was still rather hung over and tired from my hydration efforts on new years eve, but somehow we managed to fit all the stuff in to my car and got on the road bound for Wellington where we were catching the ferry across to the South Island.
After the 3 hour ferry trip I continued the drive on through to Christchurch I even managed to set a pretty good time from Blenhiem to Christchurch fuelled by 3 energy drinks to keep me awake as I was driving through the night, I was happy to see the end of the drive and to arrive at my friends house and get some sleep.
While in Christchurch I spent the time riding and getting my sweet new Lapierre DH920 dialed in at Vic Park which is the local Downhill area and is full of sick tracks, and also I checked out most of the skateparks in the area. I spent two solid days helping out the guys to finish the track benching out a hillside digging with a pick all day, but the end result was worth it, it had to be one of the sickest looking tracks that I had seen in a long time especially on the NZ race scene, it was so steep and technical that some named it "The Widow Maker" but I just couldn't wait to ride it!
Practice day rolled around and I got up with Sam Blenkinsop and Brook Macdonald to get a run in, but we were forced to tramp/ride another way down the hill, as we had "forgotten" our gloves and BikeNZ has a shit rule that you have to wear them to be allowed to ride, I don't wear gloves all year and I have to wear them to race NZ race's I find this a bit of a joke! So when we got down the hill and got some gloves and finally got to ride the track we were rather relieved and the track was awesome really steep and loose but as soon as you had some lines dialed it would be sick! Well thats what we thought but after many other riders complaints they decided to change the track, as apparently it was too hard for many people...I thought it was the NATIONALS! I was pretty disappointed as the track would have suited me I think and I had put a lot of hard work in to finish it.
They moved the top section of the course to what I would have called a walking track or cattle track, with a lot of pedaling it was pretty much the opposite of the original track, but it is was it is and I still was here to race so I put in a few practice runs to get it dialed before race day. Race day I awoke to another fine sunny day and headed up the hill for a couple of practice runs before getting ready for the seeding run, my seeding run went ok I didn't push too hard so that I still had some left for race run I came in 4th so I knew I had to put in a bigger effort in finals!
My final runs started off ok but then in a few of the skinny corner's I was over cautious and didn't really ride how I would of liked to, I didn't push as hard as I should of in the mid section of the course and just lost time due to holding back too much, but rode the bottom section pretty well. But it just wasn't my day 7th place .3 of a second out of the top 5, I was pretty disappointed with this result and will have to work hard to put something better together at the next race in Dunedin, anyways so Sam Blenkinsop took the win with Justin Leov in 2nd and Cam Cole taking 3rd place. Now I head down to Dunedin where I have the next NZ Cup race this coming Sunday hopefully I have a better weekend.
Finally thanks to everyone helping me out!
Wyn
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