Gorrick Spring Series Round 1

Well its been a while since I have updated my blog and what seems a age since my last race. With a good end to last season with a 4th overall at the Southern XC and 7th in last years Spring series I was looking forward to getting into race mode again.

With the winter being quite wet I turn to riding mostly on my Single-speed 29er to cut down on maintenance costs. So with the a new race bike in the offering I jumped at the chance to try out a geared 29er. The mountain bike I choose was the Felt Nine Two a full carbon 100mm hardtail even the quick spin home on Friday when I picked it showed that it was a quick bike but I was unsure how the legs would react to a bike with gears after spending so long on the single-speed.

With the start times moved this too 2pm for the Open category meaning a bit more of a lie-in I got there feeling ready to with a quick spin around the course showed the Gorrick team had put together another great and surprisingly dry one with a good mix of single-track, down-hills and couple of nasty climbs to suck the energy out of the legs.

With nerves jangling on the start line the claxon soon went off and the nerves soon disappeared. With the usual first lap jostling in to the first section of single-track over it was time to put my head down and start putting in some good efforts to build some good gaps. By ¾ of a lap done I was on my own which is a double edge sword it can help settle you down and get in to your rhythm but with no one around to race against you can relax to much. The bike was handling great and accelerating at the drop of a hat I caught up with the rider in front on the second lap and stuck on his wheel but unfortunately I dropped my chain on the last climb and he soon put a gap on me.

The beginning of the last lap saw me put in the a good effort to chase him down but he was stronger on the climbs but I would catch him again on the down-hills we yo-yoed like this for rest of the lap and coming in to the final climb he picked up stick in his rear mech which caused his gears to skip which gave me the chance to stay with him so it came to down to the final sprint to the line which unfortunately I just missed out on by a 1 second. As I sat exhausted on the finish line I was thinking that good battle for say 5th or 6th but to my surprise it was the battle for first so all in all it was a great race and I am looking forward to the next round in a couple of weeks time.