Mt Victoria Super D

Another local event that I was really looking forward to this year was the Mt Vic Super D - a mostly downhill cross country race.
The course took us from the top of the hill, just underneath the lookout, all the way to the bottom at the dipper, and included a bit of everything. There were some medium sized jumps, some flat pedally sections, a couple of pinch climbs, and of course, some steep, technical rooty sections.
I went for a ride the day before to have a look at the track, and was excited to see a lot of people riding, practicing, shuttling and doing some final tweaks to the track. I weaved my way up the hill, checking out where the course went and if there was anything to watch out for. There was a cool new track leading into Rods Drop, it was quite tight, with some off camber roots and being relatively new, it was nice and loamy in sections. Heading up from there most of the tracks I knew from riding and racing, so I would be up to speed pretty quick. I did two laps of the track, which I figured was enough for the day.
The next morning, after a bit much of a sleep in, I woke up to a stunning Wellington day, with a generous helping of wind, despite the forecast most of the week predicting rain of some sort.
I made it just in time to register, and only had time for one uplift before they closed for the morning, so I tweaked a couple things on my bike and rode up for another.

Rods Drop. Cheers Spoke Magazine for the photo, you can read their race report here.

At the bottom I watched the final practice runs come down, then sat around for about an hour waiting for the call up to go for seeding runs. Being open men I was one of the last to go up, so I got to watch some of the under 15 and under 17s come down, and some of them were insanely quick through the root section beside the event village.
After waiting and chatting at the top for a bit, I lined up for seeding, not really feeling 100% so I wasn't sure how it was going to end up. Taking off, I felt pretty good, and decided not to go all out for the pedally parts, not knowing how it would affect me for the more technical and less forgiving sections later on in the track. I go to the bottom without too much issue, not tired but I felt pretty good about my ride, and feeling like I could improve a bit more for the final race run.

Full speed down the roots by the event village. Cheers Ricoh Riott for the photos.

After a while, the results from seeding came out, and I was really happy to see I was 5th overall and 2nd open male, with a time of 5:40.7. This meant I would be the 2nd to last rider to do my race run.
I enjoyed waiting around at the top, and some people were surprised to see me line up on a carbon XC hardtail, so that was a nice feeling.
My race run went well, there were some sections up the top where the wind coming up the hill was strong enough to blow me off line a couple times, but I don't think it affected my race time. I pedalled quite a bit harder on the flats and the uphills this time, hoping to maybe make up some time, so I was pretty knackered by the time I finished, but I didn't make any major mistakes and I was happy with my run.
After what seemed like ages waiting around in the wind, prizegiving got underway, and I was called up for 2nd in open men, with a time of 5:38.7, exactly two seconds faster than seeding, and only 0.9 seconds in front of 3rd place. You can see the full results here.
My Scale 910 worked really well for this event, it rode real smooth and was really stable on the rough stuff, leaving me fresh to go for it on the uphills. I definitely didn't feel like it was a disadvantage at all, and it was great to show people what you can do on 'just' a cross country hardtail.
It was an awesome event, really well run, awesome track, and a great atmosphere. I really do hope that we see more of this type of event, it's good to do events like this where you get a very different sort of crowd than the XC races I am used to.