Wild Welly

Last year when the Wild Welly was on I was in taupo racing VMX

This year that wasn't the case, but  had no intention of racing at the Wild Welly, but then I got asked to do a few laps for someone who was going to be quite late turning up (a social 4 man team), then the call went out on vorb from a team who one their members was hurt in car accident, I put hand up hoping not to be the snail on the team, unfortunately I still had work the morning, so I arrived about 2 hrs after it had started.

I looked at the time the team had already been doing (there was about a 10 min variation) so I felt quietly confident I wasn't going to be the slowest, Phew!. Lap 1, I was in oxygen debt before I got out of the velodrome ( the grass was uber power sapping) and it didn't get any better for the entire lap, man this was going to be a hard day. Lap 2, I set of a little slower and now that I knew the course I didn't make as many mistakes but I was still in oxy debt within the first quarter of he lap but did mange to ride a clean lap and was about 40 seconds faster

Lap 3, was much the same as the above but sorted a couple of things and chased a R 'n' R rider most of the lap till the last uphill, never did manage to save enough energy for that last hill, another 10 second faster for that lap

Lap 4, and by that stage my legs felt like they were about to start cramping, (bear in mind my lack of riding lately) so I set of fairly casual and when I hit the road I was able to actually hook up a couple of gears, but when I hit the steep bit in the gravel walk way I relented back to granny gear and spun up which meant when I hit the soccor feild I was able to power across it rather than just using it for recovery and grovel across it, from there on the lap went mostly well, except I cocked up the rooty climb and had to run the top of it,  amazingly I took almost another minute out of my lap time

The next and my last lap was with lights on, started off with much the same theory as the previous lap, but I almost chucked it away going into the first rooty descent I missed the groove and end up in the trees but stayed on. unfortunatly my bike had been ghost shifting all day on the bumps (uber expensive Nikon cable IMHO are not the ticket) and when I turned into the single track after the soccer feild and stood up to power up the small climb it skipped gears and jammed the chain,  off the bike ran up the hill kicked the pedals backwards and it freed up but it just continued to get worse as the lap went on and I got badly held up on the second piece of single track on the way up so this lap was not good about the same time as my first lap.

at the end of the day I was rapt that

I manged to get faster even though my legs got more fatigued,

I manged to find challenges all the way around the course to keep it interesting and more than just a slogg challenge

I managed not to cramp at all even that night in bed when cramp often hits me real bad.

My fastest lap time was within about 30% of the elite racers, which when consiering my lack of riding and the course was 80% climbing, I was more than happy.

The team I rode for finshed about 9 or 10th in cat, I think, I was not the fastest on the team but by no means the slowest.