Good to meet you too, Dave. I got on alright:
Stage 1- I was riding pretty well but went straight into one of those rocks on the apex of the corners and went sliding down the side of the hill 😆
Stage 2- Went shocking bad, I should have down a video, ‘How not to ride a mountain bike in the mud’
Stage 3- I was fairly happy with this, it’s quite pedally and I’m good at that but I suffered from arm pump quite a bit.
Stage 4- Even more arm pump and I couldn’t put the power down when I wanted to on some bits because I couldn’t get traction on the wet loosish rocks. It was a really fun stage, though.
Stage 5- I was pretty dang happy with this stage too, I did really well on the pedally bit and took a bit line thorugh the rock garden.
There were 5 of us in the under 18 category and I didn’t really stand a chance tbh, two of them had nearly 4 years on me and had AM full suses, the other two had around 2 years on me, were both sponsored and were also on AM bikes. I’m happy with how I did considering I’ve only been riding 9 months now, was about 2 years younger than anybody else there and was the only rider on a hardtail (I think).
I hung around for the presentation anyway and they were giving away freebies. I got a Fenwick’s mug and a bottle of All Conditions Lube but the really good bit was later…
The Mountain Bike Chalet were sponsors and were giving away a week’s guided, catered week in a chalet in Les Arcs to 13th place in each category. There weren’t 13 people in my category but he gave it to me for being the only one in my category there at the time to ride more than one in the series and also for riding everything on a hardtail. So I’ve got a weeks holiday in teh Alps for next summer 😀