Round 1 MTB Nationals Adelaide

Thursday saw me and travel partner Duncan Murray head off to Adelaide for the first round of the Nationals at Eagle Mountain Bike Park, finished up my last day of work at my current job on the Thursday so after a few goodbye's I headed off to Northcote to pick up Duncan and by about 6 pm we were on the road and on our way to our first pit stop Nhill, we rocked up at the motel at about 11.30pm, was as dodgy in the room as it was from what we could see from the outside, was pretty tired from the drive so all I wanted was a nice shower and to jump in to bed, Duncan bagged the double bed and had the single, jumped in the shower only to have a light mist of water to stand under, was the worst shower ever! The curtains had cob webs all ver them and it was not all that clean, it's ok I told myself, only have to sleep and get outta here early, jumped in bed and pretty much sunk in the middle of it and that's where I stayed, could barely roll over the bed was that saggy, time to get some sleep, or so I thought, we were on the main highway with trucks roaring past every minute and the odd freight train, I reckon I managed 10 minutes of deep sleep for the whole night, could not get out of there quick enough in the morning.

So we headed off for Adelaide first thing and made it to the track for a pre ride of the course by about 11.30am, got the bikes out and took off for a spin around the track, a quick loop around the Short Course XC track then straight up in to some switchbacks, this is where I had my first stack for the weekend, nothing major but put me in one of my moods first up, Duncan made his way to the top pretty quickly and kept waiting for me to catch up to offer help over any technical stuff along the way, made it to the top and then came to my first rocky step up, mucked up again going over that and started having negative thoughts about doing the race and was wondering why I was even there, started cracking it with myself which just made me muck even more, so I had a bit of a hissy fit and just wanted to be left alone so told Duncan to go ahead and I would catch him at the end of the track, I took a few minutes to myself on the side of the track to get it together and after a bit of a climb the track led to an awesome fast section with some nice jumps and down through some really nice singletrack, this was enough to make me snap out of my mood and I really started to enjoy it from here on in. The track would actually be one my fav's now, it was alot fun and mixed with smooth and rocky sections with no massive climbs and nice downhill sections to recover.

Saturday morning comes around and it is one hour away from my race start, I am as nervous as ever and trying to calm my nerves by just hanging around watching the first race for the day and keeping myself hydrated, Duncan suggests I should head off and get changed in to my gear and go for a warm up ride, head off to get changed and the announcer starts calling all the female competitiors to the start line to get transponders fixed to their bikes, so big rush to get changed and get ready to go, get on the start line and we have about 20 minutes before our race is due to start, this is making my nerves even worse, I checked out the opposition and they looked pretty fit for Sport class, started playing the race over in my head and had a plan to try and stick behind them for the whole race then overtake if I could. We finally get called to the official start line and the gun goes off, nerves are in overdrive now, gotta stick with the bunch at least for the part where the crowd can see, found it easy to stay with them through the Short Course track and was braking most of the way through as I was too close to them so felt I could stick with them for the race if they kept that pace, that was until we hit the switchbacks, I went in to it in front of one other rider and was struggling to stay close to the other girls, had my first stack here which was what I was most worried about as there were quite a few people watching, so let the other rider in front and tried to stay with her, she got away up the climb and I caught her back on the descent, I passed her here and then she managed to catch me again on the next climb where she got back in front again, I rode my butt off throught the next downhill section and caught her again and passed her only to crash in front of her and let her get past again, washed off the dirt and blood with my water jumper back on and caught her yet again, past her again and it remained that way for the rest of the lap, I went through that lap about 3 minutes in front and was confident I could keep that lead, she caught me again on the next climb and I had another little stack and that was the end for me, I didnt catch her again after that, then the Elite women started coming through so spent alot of time pulling over to let them through.

I ended up with 3rd in Womens Sport at my first Nationals event, shame there were only 3 of us entered in the race! I heard them calling me for presentations but was too embarrassed to go up and collect my trophy for 3rd and last place so went up to collect it after, it is a cool trophy after all.

The next round of the Nat's I will be doing will be at the You Yang's so will be spending the next 6 weeks out there training when I can, hopefully will give me the home track advantage.

Overall I had a great weekend and was awesome to see the Elite guys and girls at it out there and just motivates me more to do better next time.

Kat