6th May 2017, Muirs Farm, 746 No 4 Road, TE PUKE
I went up with Kevin Pinfold and Phil Stephenson. It was a bit weird. Mum and dad were travelling up at the same time but I couldn’t go with them. They had to take uncle Robert’s small Subaru, full of computers and stuff. Anyway, we stopped at gumboot town for dinner and, nek minnet, mum walked in to the subway. I’ve been to events without my parents but it seemed funny to be travelling seperately and bump into them.
We stayed at Andy Anderson’s. He used to be a Manawatu rider. We got to Andy’s at around 10:30. I took a while getting to sleep and woke up tired. On Saturday morning I was exhausted. I stumbled out of bed, got the keys from Kevin, went to the van and got my nutri-grain, and then, in full zombie mode, handed the keys back to Andy! Oops. They were both wearing the same chequered shirts and I was eyes down and not really paying attention. Embarressing.
Despite being exhausted I had a great day. I was having fun and that made me more confident which meant I attacked stuff harder, and rode better. It is easier to clear obstacles than it is to push your bike over them. Because I wasn’t having to push all the time I stayed fresher.
My favourite sections were four and six. Section four was the boulders. Over one smaller boulder, through a gap, then back over a much bigger boulder. The gap was tricky. It was much easier to miss it altogether but it was hard to get the right line off the first boulder because it was slippery. The scary bit was the drop off the top of the bigger boulder. It wasn’t actually that bad but the first time I couldn’t stop myself from dabbing before dropping over. But the bit that always worried me was the step up onto the first boulder. It was only about a metre but it was vertical and the top of the boulder was sloping and splippery. It always looked so easy to get wrong.
Section six was the first one in the trees. There was a steep, almost vertical climb of about 3 metres that caused me no end of problems. Nearly everyone else seemed to cope with it ok but I spent the first two attempts desperately scrambling to avoid a five. It involved a lot of pushing and wheelspin just getting up the last metre. However the real killer was the basketball-sized rocks at the end. Over one group would have been bad enough but then there was a tiny square of dirt where you had to make a fairly sharp left hand turn and then up onto a confused mess of rocks and roots turning right to exit between two trees. It looked hard to get a three. It looked impossible to clear. On the last lap I had to use my foot to get into position for the exit rocks and then I nailed it. It was a bit out of control as I careened right and bounced through the finish flags, but I didn’t dab! I got a one.
At the end of the day I was surprised to see that I had beaten Gabrielle by 10 points. I have only beaten her once before so that was pretty cool.