Back to Blue Gum

This weekend WSMTB raced at Blue Gum Lodge. I remembered it being good, but not as good as it truly is. It is so unique this track. It almost never gets used but seems to hold up so well when the leaves are rolled of the top of it.
Its tight single track with a few grass/open sections that you can use to pass if necessary. The only issue with it is the fact it is a very short course so you need to have lower numbers on course.

I was feeling pretty good the morning of – after a 2 hour ride the day before hand where i didn’t really get my HR up very high at all. I lined up for B-Grade with pretty high expectations. I knew I hadn’t been that consistent with my training but still felt I would be carrying good form into the round.

Sadly that was about as good as it really got. I started really well, following Darren from WSMTB and I didn’t seem to be pushing to hard at all. I was in really close to him when we went over a left handed drop. Its a bit nasty the drop and I had forgotten about it. Basically being so close to Darren on such a winding single track meant I didn’t really see it coming up and sure enough I dropped the bike. I was supper pissed off with myself and at that point I dropped 2 spots. Without any real injury I got back up and continued on and felt i still had good pace.

By the third lap things weren’t as good as my start and I was starting to struggle a fair bit. I had taken back the two spots but I just didn’t have the legs and had to let them take me back, one of whom was Martin from Rockytrail. My target of a top 10 finish wasn’t going to happen today.

I was pretty devastated by then and felt shattered. I kept it upright till the finish and found I was still strong towards the end making it up all the technical sections reasonably easily.

Looking back at my times I am definitely in the right group. If I had been in C-Grade I would have come close to winning so I just need to put more time into my fitness [AGAIN! bahhhhh]. In the end I finished 14th which was 2nd last.
Insert blank silence here…

For Carbo the tubeless set up was bloody good and width stood all the battering Blue Gum dishes out. There was one incident where under power the chain jumped and I was so close to cracking my nuts on the top bar again [like the chain break last weekend].