Possibly the hardest downhill track in the 2014 SDA series and I was racing it as only my second ever SDA in probably the wettest and muddiest conditions possible. Over the two days of practice and racing I think I had more crashes than most of my other races put together. When I rode the course for the first time I was pretty scared by the look of a steep rock drop with an off-camber roots run in, into a muddy rutted corner, but once I did it I actually found it one of the easiest parts of the course. After the Saturdays practice I was feeling ok but I knew it was going to be a hard race.
However a crash on one of the steep shutes on my practice run on Sunday, knocked my confidence a bit and also quite hurt my leg. I was pretty scared to ride that bit again but I was really happy when I made it down the whole top section cleanly in my first race run. It was the bottom section that caught me out. After the fire road I got stalled on a rock and ended up stuck in the mud so I had to get off and run to the top of the rock drop and then get on my bike. But then after the drop I skidded out on some roots and couldn't get going again in the mud so had to run up the little hill and then get back on to go down the steep muddy section where my feet weren't clipped in yet and I slipped out and when over the handlebars hitting my leg in the same place as practice. After that I was a bit shaken so I just tried to get down without falling again. I decided not to do a second race run as my leg was really painful riding on the bike.
The fact that 4 women and a few juvenile boys pulled out of the race after Saturdays practice, and out of the 5 junior girls who did the first race run only 2 completed the second race run, just shows how tough the track was. As nobody had a perfect race run, I ended up coming 3rd which wasn't my best result but I wasn't too disappointed with it given the conditions and I was pleased that I managed to face my fears.
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