Jay Williamson reports from Rd1 one of the Woodland’s Winter Series
Photos by Rob Nickels, Chris Davison and Tom Payne.
The first race of the year for me kicked off this weekend with Woodland Riders Round 1 in Tavistock … and man it was a hard race to start off the year! The track was looking great but recent forestry work made for a very boggy track from the start and lot of pedalling was needed! I soon realized that with a good month or so off the DH bike it was going to be  harder than I thought to get back into shape to be ready to race this weekend!
For me practice was all about trying to get a full run put together with the cold effecting my breathing and my body suffering from all the training that I’ve been doing – I felt that it was only going to be my determination that got me a good result with a fair few good riders that where looking strong on track.
With a huge mental battle going on in my head that I had not really come across before I knew that I needed to put everything into this first race run to make it count. I managed to finally get myself warm at the top of the hill (took some effort that’s for sure -2 is bloody cold to be racing bikes!!) and was keen to get on with this race run.
Luckily though – I crossed the line and I’d done it, I had a great smooth run with no mistakes and I had took the top spot overall by 2 seconds, I was really pleasantly surprised and stoked that even with second runs to come I had done enough to get a good result to start off the year!
With a big boost from the first race run and finding some more energy from somewhere, I really wanted to see if I could better the first run time. Race run 2 got a little out of hand by trying to push a bit too hard but I managed to stay smooth on the bottom sections and come across the line with a sick little seat bounce and ET to find out I had gone 0.1 one up on my 1st run time which I was really happy with! It’s going to be a tough old year heading into Elite so I’m stoked that I managed to push harder and keep my consistency with results going.
I would like to thank everyone for getting behind me at the races and showing there support for 2013, and to Woodland Riders who are making the South West scene constantly bigger and better. Cheers guys!
Massive thanks to Wideopenmag and all the sponsors that have given me a chance to be where I am now and letting me prove to myself that I am going in the right direction! Special thanks to Team Mechanic Chaz Curry who busted a gut to get me on track this weekend! Thanks a lot everyone and see you around!
Jay races for Wideopenmag – with support from Nukeproof, Fox Europe, Fenwicks, Conti tyres, Five Ten, Action Cameras, TF Tuned and RoostDH.
