A smaller crew had turned up at Awaba for the Grand Prix Championship for 2019. It was warm already on arrival with a forecast that only promised further heat and wind.
We gathered with our JetBlack Racing Team mates, many of which had just completed a reccy lap, sweat already dripping from their brows. Some light banter as both teams and solos considered their strategies.
On our own short reccy we found the trail was dry and loose in sections. With Jason English naming the game for the day being smooth in and out of corners, it wasn’t long before we headed down the firetrail for a race start.
On our first lap we were joined by team mate Kevlar, who was on his final run of large rides for the year. With Kev barking orders we wound our way around the increasingly diverse trail Awaba now has on offer.
Passing Kev, we kept an eye on the riders a couple of hundred meters in front of us, maintaining a nice pace over the first few laps. With the inclusion of Camelback Climb there was plenty of sweet long descents to have fun on.
Hitting the midway mark it was getting crazy warm and we could feel our body not responding well to the early heat. But it wasn't just us starting to suffer, we tagged onto, then passed Mobius rider Chris who admitted being cooked. Chis went on to slide 10mins behind over the course of the remaining laps.
All the front running teams and solos had seemed to slip away again for this event, leaving what seemed like a huge gap of space to makeup. Thankfully with less riders on trail this did leave plenty of open trail and very little passing over the course.
Two laps from the end our support crew must have been reading our mind as they handed us an extra bottle of water and a cooling towel. The towel, a permanent part of our riding kit, soaked with water brought some relief from the punishing conditions.
On our final lap we were joined by team mate Dave, who was riding in a team of three for the 7hrs. Having Dave behind us kept our mind focused on riding and not worrying so much about the dry heat sapping all our energy.
We crossed the line with 15mins remaining on the racing clock and very little left in the tank. We waited and were relieved when our competitors chose to call it a day too. This gave us our best result for the Rocky Trail year with a 1st in Category and 5th overall. Thanks to all my JetBlack Racing team mates for their support again!
It has been a solid week of racing with the NSW Police and Emergency Games XCO [1st] and GE [3rd] (a 1200km road-trip) and the Grand Prix Championship (a 560km road-trip).
Full results can be found here.
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| All photos by: OuterImage |
Passing Kev, we kept an eye on the riders a couple of hundred meters in front of us, maintaining a nice pace over the first few laps. With the inclusion of Camelback Climb there was plenty of sweet long descents to have fun on.
Hitting the midway mark it was getting crazy warm and we could feel our body not responding well to the early heat. But it wasn't just us starting to suffer, we tagged onto, then passed Mobius rider Chris who admitted being cooked. Chis went on to slide 10mins behind over the course of the remaining laps.
All the front running teams and solos had seemed to slip away again for this event, leaving what seemed like a huge gap of space to makeup. Thankfully with less riders on trail this did leave plenty of open trail and very little passing over the course.
Two laps from the end our support crew must have been reading our mind as they handed us an extra bottle of water and a cooling towel. The towel, a permanent part of our riding kit, soaked with water brought some relief from the punishing conditions.
On our final lap we were joined by team mate Dave, who was riding in a team of three for the 7hrs. Having Dave behind us kept our mind focused on riding and not worrying so much about the dry heat sapping all our energy.
We crossed the line with 15mins remaining on the racing clock and very little left in the tank. We waited and were relieved when our competitors chose to call it a day too. This gave us our best result for the Rocky Trail year with a 1st in Category and 5th overall. Thanks to all my JetBlack Racing team mates for their support again!
It has been a solid week of racing with the NSW Police and Emergency Games XCO [1st] and GE [3rd] (a 1200km road-trip) and the Grand Prix Championship (a 560km road-trip).
Full results can be found here.
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