SA DHI National #3 - Port Elizabeth - 27 May 2012

Last year we didn't have the best experience at the PE National (with the race being called off due to rain) so I was hoping for something a lot better, track and weather wise. We arrived after a 12 hour long road trip in the Jeep. 

The track walk was probably one of the worse experiences in my life. I walked the track pretty early on Friday morning and was met by about 1000 big spiders - and I don't do spiders! In between being the "track spider web removal guy" I managed to find a few good lines on what looked to be an awesome track.

My thoughts were right - the track was a ton of fun to ride. It had tight, awkward, flat, drifty corners the whole way down. I haven't had that much fun on a first run down a track this whole year.

I managed to get everything on the track done before the end of Fridays practice. The one thing that I couldn't do was remember the whole track. With so many tight corners and thick bush a lot of it looked the same. But I did manage to catch a few runs on GoPro so I studied the track using this footage.

Race day was rather cold, although the sun was out. My one and only practice run of the day didn't quite go according to plan. During the latter part of Saturdays session, somebody must have destroyed the take-off of one of my lines - the line hopped over this massive deep rut near the bottom. Thanks to the take-off not being there I came up short and cased the rut hard and went over the bars. I got down from my accidental head stand and pushed back up the track to give it another shot. This time I boosted and cleared the rut with out a problem. To add insult to injury, my tire burped in the next corner, sending me over the bars again. After sorting out my tire and icing my swollen ankle, I then found that my cranks had shifted over slightly. Mark Hopkins from cSixx helped me out and got everything sorted just in time for me to get on the shuttle for my seeding run.

My seeding run was good. I was stoked to be be seeded 3rd overall and after some more ice on my ankle, I headed up to the top for my race run. 

Everything was going great in my run until I drifted a bit wide in one of the corners and came into contact with a tree that stopped me dead in my tracks. I put my feet down and luckily didn't come off the bike. I charged hard for the rest of my run and tried to pull back some time. I ended up 6th overall and 3rd Junior. This wasn't the result I was hoping for, but I had such a fun weekend on the bike and an awesome time in PE. Huge congrats to the guys from Hayterdale Trails on making a super sick track and to everyone involved in the event.