A last minute decision to race certainly paid off this weekend! Having weeks ago deciding that racing so close to the Enduro World Series was a bad idea as the risk of injury, as well as fatigue, was too high, for some reason on Thursday I changed my mind. I hadn't had much time on the bike the week leading up to it and as a result, I was feeling sluggish. There's nothing like racing to kickstart both mind and body into action so I decided to go with it. Saturday practice started off well with the sun out splitting the stones. The tracks were bone dry and super fast! We got through Stage One, Two and halfway down Three, it was as if the sky literally burst and the rain came pelting down. We all tried to take shelter under the trees but it was so heavy, we got soaked to the skin and the rain was just relentless. After about twenty minutes or so, we rode the rest of the stage in the rain which was WILD and headed back to the van, soaked to the core and freezing! After a quick drying off, we headed down to the lovely coastal town of Newcastle, based at the foot of the Slieve Donard mountain. Such a pretty town, I couldn't stop taking photos! After a good feed in the local and a walk around, we headed back to the campsite to watch some video footage from my OLFI action camera, put some tunes on and prepared everything for race day. As a result, we ended up riding stages 4 and 5 blind on race day, which added to the fun and craziness of it all! I had an absolute blast of a race! Stormed into second just 23 seconds off the win with a time of 21:29 and blazed through five awesome stages! Racing against the one and only Meave Baxter was tough but the best woman won! Absolutely gunning for next weekend now! Massive thanks to The Bike Rack Dublin for having the Transition Patrol in mint condition as always! To Glyn and Cat O'Brien and the Vitus First Tracks Race Division team for such a brilliant race, Donard definitely lived up to its name for having some of the best enduro tracks in Ireland. Great video edit by Harry Thompson on the race. I managed to get a feature at 38seconds where you will see my Rockshox Lyrik forks doing their thang! 8/1/2022 02:38:24 am
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