Gravity Enduro RD2 3Rock

What a weekend at round 2 of the Gravity Enduro series! 2 days of riding and flat out racing on 3Rock. Things got going at 11am on Saturday as I headed out for practice with Jonathon Maunsell, Alex Nowtynski and Jordan Kelly. We spent over 5 hours out on course looking at lines and getting up to speed on course. I managed to get a little bit too up to speed while practicing part of stage 3 and had a big crash which hurt my wrist and stopped me from riding stage 4 properly in practice.

Race Day

Racing started at 10 o'clock on Sunday morning. With a shorter course everybody knew that winning times would come down to seconds. Stage 1 went well without any problems and managed to hit all my lines from practice. I felt that i might have ridden the brakes a bit to much in the steep section but I was still only 6s behind after the 1st stage. Stage 2 felt faster but still was a couple of seconds off the pace. Stage 3 went really well, got all my lines and didn't crash like on practice day. I manage to put in a similar time to the others on this stage so was pleased with that. Stage 4 was up next and to be honest i had no clue what I was going to be like on it without riding it properly on the Saturday. I did manage to get a clean run down but it was nearly 10s of the leaders pace. Coming into the final stage I knew I had to push hard and once again got a clean fast run down the stage and finished 1s off the fastest rider on the stage in our category. My times put me 3rd on every stage in my category. In the end I finished up 3rd in the 14-18 Category and 12th overall. Delighted to take 3rd in such a closely contested field of riders and looking forward now to heading over the water to race the Enduro World Series in Scotland next week.

Big thanks to Expert Cycles for having the bike running perfect for the race and to Adrian Van Der Lee and Action Pictures Ireland for the Photo's

Xc NPS Rd2 3Rock

So this is a bit late but I'll give you a short report from 3Rock 2 weekends ago. So obviously this was my home NPS. I helped to build the course as well as tape it out on the Friday and Saturday morning. The course was definitely one of the most technical courses of recent memory for xc. The race started at 2 o'clock. I got a good start of the line and manage to get into 3rd just before we entered the first singletrack. From that I was able to pull a bit of a gap down the first downhill which gave me some space for the tarmac climb. Near the end of the climb I was passed again and dropped back to 4th. I managed to move back into 3rd on the long descent back to the bottom of the mountain and held 3rd till near the end of the last climb before the finish. This went on till the end of the 3rd lap. As we hit the tarmac on the 4th lap I was still in 3rd place and had a bit of a gap. That didn't last though as 4th and 5th came past me like a steam train on the big 29ers. I tried to chase them but I had let them get too far ahead of me. I pushed on hoping I might catch them on the descent but it never happened. I came across the line by myself taking 5th place in the juniors. Big thanks to Robin in Expert Cycles for bring up a jockey wheel for my derailleur after it decided to implode just after I had arrived up and Adrian Van Der Lee for the photo's.