Last weekend marked the final event of the New Zealand summer series with the National Championships being held on Signal Hill in Dunedin.
With rain all week leading up to the event the track was extremely slippery and had already taken a few people out with injuries during the week so it didn't take much for me to decide to skip the first of two days practice to leave everyone else to slide their way down the hill and cut the track in a bit more. By Saturday the track was slowly starting to dry out with a bit of sun shining and a good breeze blowing through the trees making it more rideable but a nasty off camber section at the very end of the track made for quite a few hold ups during the day and I think I only had one clean run through there during the day.
With sun forecast for race day things were looking better and after the organisers had cut a couple of trees out of the off camber section at the bottom the track was flowing nicely and was looking to be a good race. My qualifying run was good up until the off camber section at the bottom of course, I landed on a root coming out of it and managed to dislodge a quite sizeable rock with my chest which I hadn't even noticed until a few friends came down to see me afterwards and make sure I was ok!
After a bit of a rest and bike maintenance it was time to head up the hill once again for my final race run of the 2011 National Circuit so I was determined to make it a good one and finish the season on a good note.
I decided to try and ride a little bit more conservatively in my race run because the track was still a bit wet and claiming a lot of riders in the other classes during finals, this tactic seemed to work pretty well for me as I had a good clean consistent run up until once again coming out of the off camber section I clipped a large rock knocked out by the rider in front of me, luckily though this time I managed to just hold it together and ride it out losing only a little bit of time.
In the end my time was good enough for 6th place against guys who are on world cup teams for the coming season and have been training hard in preparation, after breaking my fingers in October last year and not even being sure if I would be able to race the whole series until December im pretty happy with how this series has gone. Ive realised a few weaknesses I need to work on and am now going to have a break for a month before getting back on the bike for a big race in Queenstown over the Easter weekend.
This weekend however brings the biggest event of the year as im getting married to my Fiancee Katie on Saturday!
Once again thanks to all of you for your help and support this season!
Photos courtesy of James Allan
