Monday 1 August 2011

Craters classic,Taupo

On a nice frosty morning my first mission was to let the car warm up for ten minutes while tipping water over the windows with the wipers going so they would stop freezing! The tracks in Taupo are always fun to race on with good flow and a high average speed, not many tree roots or stuff to make it tricky so the key is to go as fast as you can to make things interesting. We raced over most of the tracks in the park and a few spots were lacking in the tape and arrow department, but we will get to that soon. I took the lead almost straight away, young Nigel McDowell was on my wheel and away we went leaving the rest of the field. After about 10min Nigel made a mistake and I was gone slowly extending my lead to about 30-40sec, Then I got to "better than p" we almost always race over this track and with only a tiny bit of tape between two trees (and no arrows to be seen) I decided to do "better than p" in favor of "young pines" ( better than p is longer anyway) I stopped at the end of the track and asked if I had gone the wrong way. About 10sec of trying to work out where I went wrong Nigel and Garth Weinberg came through, I jumped in behind them and then a stick jammed in my chain rings. Once going again I was able to catch them on "coaster" and Nigel and I rode away from Garth on the next climb. As Nigel is about to head over to get ready for the World Champs in Swiss land I decided I would set a good solid pace and keep him in the red zone (kinda like motor pacing him I guess) as we neared the end I put in a couple little hits as the pitch went up. I broke the elastic and pulled away on the last single track to take the win. I raced with my BRYTON and have decided to unlock the file to be viewed so you can all check it out and get a taste of some of the cool stuff able to be done with the bryton  www.brytonsport.com/mapLatestTracks/2?         keyword: mikeynorthcott
It was awesome to race again as I cant remember the last time I have had this much time between races, Single speed Champs was my last race during easter weekend and the race before that was the Oceania champs mid March. I think the lack of racing has been good as Im keen to be back out there hitting it again. I cant wait for next year