The last of the N-Duro series was, luckily for me, in the middle weekend of my mid semester break. I went down on the Saturday afternoon and went for a quick ride with the Beavens to check out the new Gunna Gotta trail.
The race morning was cold as usual, but I felt that it was going to warm up quite a bit, so after warming up, I decided to race without a thermal.
We had another pretty stacked field and I was thinking that the start would be pretty fast, heading up the road beside Mad If You Don't and into pig track early on, so I made sure I had a half decent warm up.
As the gun went off, I was second row, and managed to get near the front up the road, and was happy to find that the pace wasn't too fast, which suited me as fast starts tend to take their toll on me later on.
We headed up through Pig Track without too much trouble, and across the road into Turkish Delight/Soakhole, another nice, flowy track where I managed to get on the wheel of Carl Jones, so I got a couple of hot lines from following him through there, until I had to pull over to put my chain back on. We headed out of Soakhole and up Tokorangi Pa road, turning right partway up and heading up a steep section of firebreak and into Gunna Gotta. The wind was a bit gusty up top so I took it easy, trying to ride smooth and watching out for some tricky sections I noticed the day before.
Heading up through Paddy's run and Tickler I felt good through the fast sections in the trees, and focused on catching a rider I could see not too far ahead of me. I got a bit of overtaking done on the road before dropping into Tickler, where I tried to hold my place before we started to head up Direct road to Sidewinder. I struggled for a while to find my pace on direct, and after a couple of minutes I managed what felt like a good speed. Sidewinder went quick as usual, taking us down to the bottom of the hill pretty quickly and pointing us up Lentil link and Hill road. Making the turn into Frontal Lobotomy was painful, as I don't tend to get along with all the short pinch climbs. There was a guy right behind me so I dug it in a bit to keep ahead of him.
As I came out of frontal I put a pretty solid acceleration in up the last pinch limb to Billy T, knowing that the it was exactly the sort of trail that I could make good time on. I had to cruise along the flat section at the top but when the trail started to head downwards I felt pretty good, riding smooth and fast. I made it almost to the bottom when I realised that my back tyre had a leak, and because of the perfect trail conditions giving so much grip, I noticed it was burping more and more, so I stopped by the step up to put some air in it.
As I was doing this, a group of 5 or 6 riders passed me which frustrated me a bit. I jumped back on, feeling good to have some more pressure in the back tyre again. I was locking forward to the rest of the downhill, G-Rock and Chestnut are more open and fast trails that I felt good on, and the two doubles on G-Rock are a good bit of fun as well.
At the bottom of the hill, we headed into Old Chevy, and I knew that this was pretty much the last tough bit of the course so I went hard so as not to lose any places, however one guy managed to get past as I struggled up one of the steeper pitches, so I did my best to keep him in my sights, planning to go for him in Yellow Brick Road, the last trail in the race before we headed onto a couple of kilometres of road to the finish. I hammered it along the road, knowing that there wasn't anything to save my energy for, and ended up finishing in 16th place. I was ten minutes off Brett Stockman, who had I was stoked to hear had won, but only 4 minutes off a top 10, so despite it not really going to plan, I feel like I have some half decent form to build on leading into summer.
Cheers to the Beavens for giving me a lift down and accomodation for the Saturday night, AvantiPlus Waitakere for some last minute bike tuning before the race, and Ra and the N-Duro team for another awesome winter series.
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