Irish NPS round 1 - Rostrevor Ireland

Chain Reaction Cycles, NPS round 1, Rostrevor, 27^th March.

On Friday after a busy morning at University I headed to pick junior rider Allan Findlay up. From there we had a 3 hour journey to Stranraer to catch a boat to Belfast. It was to take approx. 3 hours to get there from Edinbrugh but with the ever busy traffic of a Friday, timing didn’t go to plan and we were running late for the ferry. A few illegal moves later and some flat out driving we made it, to the ferry, just!

Aboard the ferry I had a nutritious meal of Lasagne and chips and then proceeded to chat on Facebook to kill the next 3 hours.  Arriving in Belfast we motored up the road and stopped at Sainsburys for the weekends shop £66 later and we had more than enough food to fuel the weekends racing. We arrived at our hostel and went straight to sleep.

A quick breakfast and straight over to get a few runs in, the track I had ridden before and knew roughly what it was like. Tight technical, rocky first section, middle section had a couple of jumps before a rocky straight with a few “pro lines” then on to the motor way section and road gap to finish. The track was in really good condition and I loved riding it. 5 solid runs and I was happy with how practise went.

I headed back to the hostel made several portions of pasta and chilled out watching ‘The Bounty Hunter.’ Next morning a little bit of confusion occurred with the clock changes but I made it on time and got a couple of practise runs in, before racing began.

I put on some fresh Rad/White Nema Gambler kit, strapped my Leatt brace up and headed up the hill. First run was pretty solid, nothing special but no crashes and I was sat in 4^th 5 seconds of the win. Second run I pushed a little harder and went a second faster despite a few sketchy moments I came down and went 5^th overall, 4 seconds off Matti Lehikoinen. A solid start to the racing calendar.

Wish a quick recovery to Matt Simmonds and Lew Buchanan who had some nasty crashes at the weekend, all the best!

This weekend I will be competing at the Alpine Bikes Winter series round 3.