I’ve raced at Bala before at a national but never with Pearce Cycles, having heard so many good things about the events I was really looking forward to rocking up and checking out what they had to offer.
First surprise on the track walk came pretty quickly when we reached the middle section of track to find the woods had been logged, creating a monster of a open section on the hill, with loads of loamy corners and stumps all over the place I knew that practice would soon get very interesting, letting riders to get creative with their lines on a virgin track.
Saturday practice – what a great day on the bike, smiling all the way down the hill at everything the track had to offer, pretty much a bit of everything thrown in. The track was quick to bed in and didn’t take long for loamy turns to start getting loose, and after only a few runs you felt up to speed with the track having a really good flow from start to finish.
I woke up on Sunday feeling quietly confident and eager to get on that start line after good few runs down the hill in the morning and finalising all that I wanted to put into my race run.
Race run one went well, I dropped the hammer from the start and felt that I had a good pace going all the way to the end, leaving me sat in second place with Harry Heath up front with a nice gap and Harry Molloy just behind in, talk of the pits was of problems in race runs so there was still time to find. I was pretty happy with my run but there were a couple of loose moments so if I could tidy those up, race run two could be the one.
In the end my second run could have not gone much better, I had a bit of a moment on the big stump gap in the open section and thought for a moment I might have just put my mech out but it’s made of tough stuff and kept going, but on a track of this nature I am sure everyone was having their moments on track.
Coming through to the finish and knowing I was on a good run, I put everything I had into the last section of wide open grassy turns, a big flash back to all that off season training as I was spinning my (not so little) legs off in that field… to be awarded with taking the overall win.
Man I was so stoked , fuelled by a poor result the week before in Poland I wanted this so bad for me and the family with the race day marking a year on from my mum losing her battle to cancer I felt that I had won a mini world cup to tell everyone back home that I had got myself on that top step, and to get the fastest speed trap was the icing on the cake.
Would just like to say thanks to everyone for the awesome support and all the great sponsors behind the Wideopen Magazine team as well all at Pearce Cycles for putting on the event…. and yes indeed you were faultless all weekend and can now back up the hype around these races.
See you all next week for a big old shock to the system in Fort William for BDS round 2…… hold on tight!!
Full results can be found over on RootsandRain
Cheers Jay!
Pics – Jim Smith.
