Another round of the 2012 NZ National Series is in the books and Methven put on a good one! I had ridden the top half of the track at Dave Balderstones memorial race in November last year so I had a rough idea of what to expect which made practice a little bit easier not needing to learn a completely new track. The top was a fast, open and had a few fun jumps in it to keep it fun before heading into a steep flowy section through the pine trees down to the finish.
Friday's practice was a day of fun runs playing around on the track with Matt Scoles which helped find out which lines worked and which didn't. Scolsy is my usual practice buddy at national rounds and is good to ride with because he seems to be able to pick the lines that work and get up to speed quickly while still having fun.
With a bit of rain sneaking down over night race day turned out fine but overcast which was good to help keep the dust down and the light change not quite so harsh going into the trees although it only took about half an hour for the track to be bone dry and dusty again!
My seeding run went well and I slipped into 5th place behind four world cup regulars so I was pretty happy to still be up there with those guys and it gave me some good confidence going into race runs.
After a big break unfortunately due to a couple of riders needing to be helicoptered out we were back to the top and getting ready for race runs. I think one of the best parts of the NZ Nationals is how much fun it is at the top of the hill before runs, no wind trainers, everyone is hanging out and messing around, not like a world cup start area!
I put in another solid run and felt like I had put in a competitive time coming through the line a second faster than my qualifier which put me into 3rd with 4 riders still to come. My time ended up being good enough for 6th which i was happy with although a little bit gutted when I saw the results and found I was only .09 of a second off the podium!
This result was good enough to bump me up into 3rd overall for the South Island Cup behind Matt Scoles and Brook McDonald which was a nice bonus for the weekend!
Still I was happy to put together two good fast runs on the day and am looking forward to National Champs this weekend which are being run on my home track here in Nelson, as well as the downhill i'm also going to be racing the Super D on Friday afternoon which I have been putting in work to try and pull a solid result!
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