Biking Blitz Ballinastoe

Biking Blitz Ballinastoe

So last weekend the first race of the season was held in Ballinastoe by Biking.ie. Each year Biking.ie hold the opening races of the season in the trail centre's around Ireland. I arrived at Ballinastoe at 11 and went and signed on for my race. This year I'm racing Juniors. After that I went on a few practise loops of the U16's course with my friend Kyle. After this I lined up for my race.

The weather was pretty crap with misty rain trough out the race. I got on to the front row of the pack with 190 other people in other category's as well as juniors behind me.. The race started and I got a great start and was first to the top of the First climb. I drop back into 4th by the time we got to the first bit of singletrack. I could see first place. As we continued on we started to catch people from the category that started ahead of us. We got past some but there was a few people between me and first place and wasn't able to get past them to catch first place. As we came out on to the next fireroad I sprinted as hard as I could to try and catch 1st but still ended up with people infront of me for the next bit of single track. I still had 1st in my sights but just couldn't catch him with all the traffic. In the next section of singletrack which was a long downhill section. For the first half of it I was stuck behind some people but I got past them and tried to make up the lost time on the rest of the downhill. I had caught up a bit but not enough. Towards the end of the race 3rd place which was Kyle was catching me but he couldn't pass me in the last section of singletrack. I sprinted to the finish line. I came 2nd in Juniors 30 seconds behind 1st and 4 seconds ahead of Kyle in 3rd. Thanks to Biking.ie for holding a great event and a big thanks to Micheal Jordan from The Cycling Inn for fixing my bike right before the race. I'm looking forward to the next round of the series in Ballyhoura in 1 weeks time