Mountain Trax Bike Demo and Spring Series Round 2

I took a Scott Scale 29er for a lap (or 3) and loved it. A great climber. After tag-teaming my husband and swopping over kiddie duty my hubby took out a Cannondale F29 and then a Scalpel 29. Hmm, think Father Christmas is going to be getting an extra letter this year.


Caroline Goward from Scott was on hand for bike set up and last minutes checks

After enjoying the demo session on Saturday, it was back to Caesars camp the following day for round 2 of the Gorrick Spring Series. Once again the ladies expert field was smoking hot with Jessie Roberts, Maddie Horton, Emily Iredale, Iwona Szmyd, Laura Sampson and Alexis Barnes lining up on the start line amongst others. The 4 mile course took in the excellent single track and killer climb of the demo course plus additional sections that seemed almost all uphill. The start was somewhat hair raising, a downhill tarmac decent into a sharp left hand turn but all the ladies made it safely. Jessie shot off like a rocket with Maddie hot on her heals and all of the rest of us strung out behind. We very quickly caught the back end of the mens sport field in the first single track climb and the inevitable result was that I lost touch with Emily and Iwona, my usual benchmarks. The first half of the course was (or at least felt like) almost all fire road and gravely climbs. An interesting little stream splash, turned into a wheel grabbing bottle neck on the first lap and by the second lap the organisers had re-routed the course through a bog instead. I really don’t know which was worse.


Thomas Barrowcliffe in the Juvenile males makes short work of the water splash

After the "killer hill", which also featured in the Brass Monkeys race held here in December, I was seriously disliking the course but the second half redeemed itself entirely. The single track was amazing; technical, rooty, with shoots and drops and great fun to ride. It was also extremely dry considering the amount of rain which has fallen almost continuously this winter, thanks to the amazing ground conditions we have in this area of the South East and the predominantly pine forest which literally just sucks the water out of the ground. 

The Scale did climb very well - on the "Roller Coaster" during the demo day

By the end of the first lap the ladies field was very close with just 1 minute separating 1st to 7th places. I was constantly in contact with Emily Iredale and Alexis Barnes, the order between the three of us constantly changing over the course of the race. Emily rode like a Trojan despite her recent broken wrist and Alexis showed her absolute power of the fire roads as she stomped her way into the head wind. A basic mistake on one of the short single-track climbs on lap 3 cost me a few seconds which was all Alexis needed to put a gap between us. It was a hard race but after the Brass Monkeys 4 hour series the finish line seemed to come round surprising quickly and I took 5th place. Jessie finished first, Maddie second and Iwona third place. The standard of ladies racing at this series really does seem to be high. I do think it is a self-fulfilling prophecy, the more fast girls that take part the more it attracts, as racers know they are guaranteed good competition. Excellent stuff, just wish they didn’t keep beating me!!

Many thanks to the Gorrick team for putting on another excellent event.