RACING UPDATES

Day Night Thriller -Taupo

The Avanti-West crew!

It was so nice to do a 12 hour relay race where it did not rain! It always seems to pour down for every Thriller and Moon Ride, but not this year, the sun even came out a while. On the morning of the event there was talk of the track being about 4km which meant lap times around 10 minutes for the faster riders. This year I was stoked to be part of the 'Still Classy Avantiplus Waitakere' team which meant I was racing with Elliot Pearce, Jamie Till, Sasha Smith and my sister Sophiemarie, with Catherine as our camp mum/team manger and the amazing Dylan looking after our bikes.
   Because of the shorter course our team decided to do double laps, so at 10am Elliot stared our 12 hour relay off with two fast as laps. We rolled through our team with me going out last.

Over the hill into the camp site... Photo: Liam Bethell

I liked the shorter lap because it meant I could smash out hard as laps! However the one time I went out Elliot thought that we had all started doing triple laps, as he had. So when I came around to hand the number on, Elliot was no where to be seen and Catherine was telling me to go out for another lap... So of course I did. Me and my brother Liam managed to find some natural jumps in our pre ride, which kept the track interesting through out the day and night! Most of the track was really fast with a good downhill to start and a nice big climb back up to the camp site.
In between laps we had lots of yummy baking and race pack food to eat while we watched Duane suffer as he rode 12 hours solo! There was even time to go have some fun with young Ben on the pump track.
As night rolled around so did the cold, and Taupo does tend to get COLD!!! This is the time when my legs just don't want to get up from the comfy camp chair in front of the gas heater, and every year I think I am never doing the 12 hour again, but after you feel so good! It's like, 'that was so fun lets do 24 hour at Moon Ride!' Yeah Nah...

Our team in 3rd + some random in red !?!? 

At the end of the night our team completed 64 laps to take third place in the open category. Our camp site was next to the Jafa Kids who also went hard out in the junior category with the Massey boys riding the most laps out of everyone. A huge thanks our awesome team manger Catherine for putting us up for 12 hours and Dylan for keeping our bikes in race condition.

On the way home we stopped off at Creators of the Moon on Sunday. After getting a little lost on a horse riding track we found a mean as trails with huge berms! Check out this video of it:

I then attempted to study for calculus and physics exams in the car ride back to Auckland...

 

 

  

Auckland XC Champs round 1 -Woodhill

Awesome woodhill photos from: Finn Welsford-Ackroyd

When the week of exams was over we had the first round of the Auckland XC Champs out at Woodhill Forrest. After a finger numbing pre ride in the freezing rain on Saturday, we got fine weather on race day.
There was a short fire road and then we were straight into the 'up lands' trail. I had a good start which put me in a good position for the tight trails. I really enjoyed the race track and managed to hold my position of second to the finish. Cosmo Blur won our under 19 category and Elliot Wright came in a close 30 seconds behind me.
It was good to see the strong turnout of Jafa Kids giving racing a go and many of them up there in the top three. Until next time happy trails... :-)