I went down with Mark Sidebotham on the Friday before the event. We stayed with some friends (Juliette Fox and Halfdan Hansen of Jens Hansen Jewellry) of his in Mapua (46 Tahi Street). This is just out of Nelson and about 30 minutes from the event.

On the way to the trial on Saturday morning there was a moment of panic when Mark went to change gear and got stuck in neutral. We pulled over to the side of the road and Mark spent about ten minutes figuring out what was wrong. Then Nick Ball pulled over to see what had happened and, luckily, had a washer the right size to fix the problem.

The rest of the day went pretty smoothly and, despite the vehicle problems, we had more than enough time to sign in and have a practice ride.

We did three laps of 10 sections which is a bit of a short trial but left plenty of time for lunch.

I was a bit frustrated with my riding. It was an easy trial. The only section I should have had any trouble on was seven, which was a boggy mess.

On the first lap I did OK. I had a few silly dabs, and I accidentally went over the tape on seven. But it was just the start of the day and didn’t matter too much.

Then, on the next lap, my score got a bit worse and, on the last lap, I got ten points. It doesn’t sound like much but, on a low scoring day, was really annoying.

Apart from my extremely frustrating score card I had a pretty good day and I thought the observers were great.