After what felt like a lifetime it was great to get back into some cross-country racing at the first national round in Adelaide. With a limited supply of XC races on the calendar through the winter it is hard to gauge how you are going compared to the rest of the field. Most of us had raced each other in marathon races and stage races but with everybody’s priority races being different you are always a bit unsure of how you’re going.
With a two-year break off the national circuit, Adelaide was back. This time with some course changes that added a bit more flow to some sections. The most significant changes occurred on the technical descent, Sunset Boulevard. With rock rollovers and smooth gap jumps it was a really fun descent and well worth the climb!
Due to 40 degree temperatures during the week the fire danger rating was on extreme, which is one below the highest rating, catastrophic. This was causing problems for MTBA, as rider safety was paramount and Eagle MTB Park is not easily accessible. There were restrictions placed on those allowed in the park for practice on Friday but it didn’t disrupt things too much – we were lucky to be allowed to enter at all. A cool change came through on Friday night during the eliminator races, which was taken out by Cam Ivory in the men’s race and Rowena Fry in the women’s race.
The sun was out, but the heat had dropped for the XCO on Saturday.
The cool change would mean a comfortable 28 degrees for race day. With a late race start of 3pm for the elite and U23 men’s fields it was a long day of tennis watching and generally filling in time. By 3pm the wind had picked up, but that wasn’t too bad as it did cool things down a notch. I was called up directly behind multi-disciplined world champion, Jared Graves. So there was no worry of getting caught behind a slow starter! With some elbow rubbing off the start, we were onto the first climb where I slotted into about 9th behind Kyle Ward. After the first single track sections, some gaps had formed and I was sitting behind Andy Blair. Towards the end of the lap, Andy got a slight gap over me and a group of three had closed in from behind. I did manage to hold them off for the second lap but they made contact on the 3rd and attacked. I couldn’t go with them and was dropped. I kept pushing hoping things would turn around and they did on the 4th lap. Towards the end of the lap I took the inside to a corner a bit hot and went down. Just like in the Forrest festival, it was only a small crash but my bars were twisted and took a lot longer than it should have to fix. I got going but had to stop again to check something that felt loose. I couldn’t tell what it was but it did make sending the A-lines on Sunset Boulevard a bit sketchy! Like a few other people that had mechanicals, that slower lap really ended my race. As it pushed my times out, I was caught by the 80% rule. I was really disappointed by getting pulled but it wasn’t like things were going to change dramatically.
Even though things didn’t go my way, it was great being back to racing the shorter races after doing mostly longer races for much of the winter. I know from training that good performance is dependent on a lot of things going well and even a small problem can change things drastically. Hopefully I can turn things around for the rest of the season. It was great to see Jared Graves win a cross country after dominating nearly every other discipline – and with broken forks! It was also great to see the level of racing in Australia increase. While the level is hard to properly gauge, it will be interesting to see how we go on the international stage in a few months time, in Cairns.
Jenni King took a great win ahead of Tory Thomas in Elite women, and all results can be read on Durt.com.au.
A big thanks must go out to Mike at Subaru MarathonMTB.com and Mark Fenner at FTP training.