The final round of Sean Clarks dirt guide series was on the 15th June and it turns out it was just "One of those days". I had to work in the morning and things were going fine until we were almost finished, as we turned the water back on we had a small leak that had to be fixed before we could leave... Once we had that sorted I was off out the gate with about 1hour before the start of my race. A 20min drive then go enter the race, get changed and down to the start line. As I rode down to drop my gas off in the pits I herd the gun go off for the first wave, I arrived on the start line and turned my bike off about 10seconds before the gun went for us. I had a good start and got into the track in the top third, I was holding my own until about half way around the loop. I went to change down at the bottom of one of the big climbs but as I tried to nothing happened, I ended up having to stop on the side of the track stuck in 4th gear and my gear shifter had "flogged out" stripped. After a few minutes of rocking the bike back and forwards I was able to get it into 2nd, this was enough to get going and up most of the climbs but as I was going along a road section I hooked up another gear into 3rd, this was ok until I caught up to some traffic in tight "single track"I was able to get past a bunch of them as we neared the end of the lap and I decided to pull into the pits and see if I could tighten the pinch bolt on the shifter, A couple guys gave me a hand to try fix the problem but still no luck so we swapped it with a spare one they had but it was for a different brand of bike and about 1km into the 15km lap the same thing happened again..... I limped my way around the lap and decided to call it a day and prevent any more damage to my bike. As I was making my way back to load my bike up I had a quick chat with Sean Clark and another guy, turns out the they had a bike in there trailer that had a shifter that fitted my bike! We swapped the shifter onto my bike and I was going again. I was no doubt last but I decided to get out there and have some fun and at least get some more time on the bike. I managed to get two more laps in and pass a few riders in the process.
Its pretty cool how people at these events are keen to help out from helping fill the petrol tank to offering to clean your goggles and even lending parts out to complete strangers! if any of these people read this then THANKS again.
Oh and to top it all off, as I loaded my bike up after the race I noticed I had a flat front tyre.....
