Mini Enduro Final Round

Well on the weekend I went to the final round of the mini enduro series. The location for this race was The Forest of Dean and boy it was fun! I managed to convinced my Mum to take me down on saturday to practice the loop. My initial assumption after doing one loop was on race day it was going to be wet and foot out the whole way down! The weather was not in our favour on Friday night for race day but as the weekend went on the weather made a change for the better and as usual the weather man got it completely wrong. We arrived on Sunday and it was gorgeous sunshine but bitter cold.

Saturday- I went for a quick loop, tried all the stages and thoroughly enjoyed them. Stage 1 was not my favourite as on saturday we had lots of rain and was super muddy. Stage 2 was an amazing stage had some nice long pedally section and some steep technical sections. One of my favourite parts on two was the line choice half way down there was one section where you could pick a high line or a tight line. In the end I decided to take the tight line and it made it much quicker. Stage 3 was also reasonably dry on saturday morning. Staged 3 was going to be a hard one with the long pedally section at the top made it very hard to drop straight into the steep burmy section at the bottom. 

After Saturday I felt reasonably confident going into race day. I looking back over the GoPro footage trying the remember the course and having a good nights sleep I was ready for Sunday!

It was a good thing that I went down on Saturday as it meant I could have a reasonable lie in and leave for 9 o'clock. We arrived on time for check in and I quickly went a did a few sections of the loop. I started on staged 1. I sessioned the bottom section which I was not 100% confident after Saturdays practice. After sessioning a few burms and lines I was pretty happy how much stage 1 had changed. The lines were much smoother and I was having lots of fun o
n that section at the end of it. I then decided to go over the stage 2 to take a look at the lines and see if anything had changed. I practiced stage 2 for a bit and came up with a few lines that made my run much cleaner and alot faster. So thanks to the marshall on stage 2 for showing me some of the faster lines. I then went and rode down stage 3 to the bottom. I was very happy I did this because the dry and tacky stage 3 I did on Saturday was wet and very off camber! 

Anyway onto the race. I came back from practice in time for a quick lunch to make my way up to the start. I thought for some reason I was meant to be there at 1:15 and instead I was meant to be there for 1:51 what gave me a bit of time to chill. Stage one was my worst run I got the power out of the start but as I was sprinting down the first straight I hit a stump and through me off balance. I regained my speed and went into the first technical section. It then hit me as I went round one of the corners that this tree was not here yesterday! It turned out a tree fell on the track and they had to make a line around it. So that took me off track for a bit. I then had a few bad moment after that so that run didn't go to plan. I then knew I had to get some time back on stage 2 and 3. I have to say stage 2 was one of the cleanest runs I have ever done. I don't think O did one thing wrong. This put me in a good mood and got me 'stoked' as us mountain bikers say! Stage 3 was also a very clean run and the fans shouting at the bottom helped me get round some of the tricky corners and sprint to the end. Got to the bottom and found I got 3rd on on that staged which I was super stoked with! 

After I found out I came third I thought I might swell stay for the results. So I stayed for the results and I booked 4th in the bag which is my best result to date. I knew that stage 1 let me down and if I didn't make those few mistakes I might have been able to bag myself a podium finish.

After this result I am stoked to train this winter and can't wait for enduro racing next season. Can't wait to see what next season can hold for me. I know i need to work on that sprinting though!

Cheers to the mini enduro team for holding an amazing race and the atmosphere was very chilled and that is what these races should be about, having fun! Hope to see Forest of Dean on the cards for next years series!