Published: 21st June, 2011
BDA - Battle Damage Assessment. Review of material state of a unit after enemy action.
If you weren't there you can't know. By the time the Masters and Vets made it to the line at 1500 the hours of non stop rain had a made an impact on the course which less than 24hrs earlier was a joy to ride, fast, not overly technical but fun when ridden at speed. Looking at the state of the returning Elite and Expert riders things were a lot different out there now.
For a change I got a reasonable start, clipped in quick and powered off the line and up the tarmac road, tucking on the back of the leading group and managed to stay in contact with them until the first section of single track. A lack of bike handling skills and semi slick tyres meant that I was soon off and running, along with a fair proportion of the field I should add loosing any advantage I'd gained at the start.
The first half of the lap up to the chute was pretty much ride, run, ride with the bike deciding where we went on the descents, I was able to ride the majority of the second half of the lap and I attacked the course trying to make up for the places lost by running. As the laps counted down and the rain continued to fall, strangely and I'm guessing it had some thing to do with the sticky mud turning into grinding paste but, I found I could ride more of the lap than I had previously. Towards the end of lap four riding with a group of vets, one of them went for the tight gap between the two trees at the 1 km to go point unfortunately he misjudged it and got spat to the ground and I watched as he landed on his bum and slide majestically to a halt sat against one of the trees! Funniest thing I've seen in a long time! (Oh he was all right and we finished the race together)
1hr 50mins plus change and it was all over.
So what was my BDA.
Two sets of brake pads down to metal
Broken clamp on rear brake
Grips written off
Washing Machine not very happy
Still best finish at a National, funny similar to last year at Margam weather goes TU and I finish higher up the field, now if I could just work on riding in the wet….
new racer trying to fight his way through the masters pack.
Read More By RobThis blog post was written by a third party and their views do not necessarily reflect the views of XCRacer.com
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