Getting up early for a day of riding mountain bikes is nothing unusual for me, but today was an exception. Today was the official opening for the double black diamond downhill trail and I had a day of downhill shuttles as well as a 3hr twilight enduro lined up for me.

For today’s downhill I would be riding my 2012 Giant Reign with my trusty GoPro Hero attached on a bar mount. Lining up at the start of the downhill, I was a little nervous as I had never ridden downhill before, but that didn’t stop me. In fact what did stop me was a flat tyre that I got only 400m into the track, which really annoyed me because all my tools where at the car park at the bottom of the run, so I had to carry my bike all the way down! After fixing the flat, the rest of the day went well. I didn’t get any more flats or other problems with the bike and I had great fun attempting to navigate through the rough terrain, (especially the cabbage patch.) I even got the guts up to do some of the jumps as well as successfully filming a couple of crashes with my GoPro!

Come the end of the day, I had completely forgotten about the cross-country but none the less I still had to get ready, so I switched from my downhill gear into my Chilli Cycles race suit and started preparing for the race. For the cross-country I would be riding a Cannondale F3, which was kindly supplied by my sponsors Chilli Cycles. Chilli Cycles also supplied my cross-country riding gear and I would like to thank them for that.

Come the start of the 3hr twilight enduro, I was filled with just a couple of sausages I had at the BBQ lunch and some nutritional bars, as well as being tired out by the Downhill. Yet as the race started I was feeling great. I powered through the first few laps, but on my 4th lap the previous downhill riding started to show. My legs started to really burn and even started cramping up a little. This started to show in my lap times as I lost about 4-5 minutes compared to my previous laps. After hitting the mud a couple of times at the bottom of the final climb, my lower gears started to cause a bit of a problem, but I finished the race with a total of eight laps and I really enjoyed myself. After placing 3rd in the cross-country and after getting a free tube for riding both the downhill and cross-country I was very satisfied with myself. I’d just like to say thank you to the club and anyone involved in the effort to making this day happen.