Gorrick Spring Series round 1
Yateley Heath Wood: 29/01/06
Paul Howard reports on his and the team's performance.
Race day started off bright but very cold, which at least meant one thing - the trails had virtually all dried up from my previous weekend's sortie into the forest to get some pre-race practice in. Lining up on the front of the Supermasters were the usual suspects including some of the top Masters from the 2005 series. Also good to see was new Mountain Trax team mate Paul Hopkins on his 'fresh from the box' Scott Genius RC10, more of this later, sporting even more carbon bits than my RC20. Very nice.
Paul Howard finished 7th Supermaster
The usual mad sprint ensued with Paul taking the head briefly and myself just a few riders behind. Nick Onslow (PedalOn) overcooked the first bend sliding out on the gravel to make a right mess of his kit and suffering flesh wounds to the knee, he soon jumped back on the case though.
I'd already planned to ride my own pace irrespective of those around me, so let a couple more riders go by before the singletrack started. The first few races are about trying different strategies to see how my first ever training plan and new skills (courtesy of TORQ's Matt Hart) would transfer into the race environment. I also know that my goals are very very different to those around me as I'm looking to peak for soloing Mountain Mayhem in June plus the 7-lap Gorrick Enduro, my forte it seems. So today was about keeping a much more constant effort spinning higher revs, in contrast to my usual method jamming up the short steep hills and then being too knackered to go quickly along the fireroads, consequently slowing each lap.
Back to the action. Two laps in I keep seeing the riders in front where the course meets in opposite directions, though they're a minute or so up the track at least I'm holding their pace. Rounding a corner Paul Hopkins comes into view, off the bike frantically wielding an Allen key to set his saddle horizontal after it tipped skyward. I offer help but he waves me on. So in a bizarre twist my goals change to stay ahead of Paul knowing he's more than capable of chasing me down. This plan comes to fruition as I now start to close the gap on John HV on the final lap, but I run out of distance finishing a minute down on him. But hey I score my first ever points in Supermasters, a whole 2 for 7th place!
In the other races we had a good turnout; in Sport was The Boss Chris riding his new Blur over 4 consistent laps and Little Dean started well but pulled out after 3 laps, Newpee in Vet's with 3 laps differing by a mere 9 seconds - amazing, Wozza and Downhill Ben in Open fighting for position all the way to the finish line placing an excellent 4th and 5th, and Russ in Fun who had a good first lap but then died, oops!
Roll on Crowthorne in mid-Feb, it's one of my favourites so long as the course remains fairly technical and twisty. Not too much of that fireroad stuff thank you!
Full results on Timelaps, series points, plus more news and rider photos on Gorrick.com
Pos Laps Time Time+ Name Lap 1 Lap 2 Lap 3 Lap 4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUPERMASTER 7 4 01:41:08 08:10 PAUL HOWARD 24:20 25:31 25:28 25:49 8 4 01:43:30 10:32 PAUL HOPKINS 23:44 27:00 25:40 27:06 VETERAN 31 3 01:29:44 20:08 JOHN NEWPORT 29:50 29:56 29:58 FUN 55 2 01:15:31 23:09 RUSSELL ELY 32:18 43:13 OPEN 4 3 01:17:30 05:39 WARREN BATES 26:37 25:06 25:47 5 3 01:17:44 05:53 BEN THOMAS 26:29 25:15 26:00 SPORT 31 4 02:01:18 28:19 CHRIS WHITE 29:05 29:54 30:30 31:49 39 3 01:16:00 DEAN MORGAN 23:58 25:22 26:40
Photo courtesy of Swarbrick.com