Since I hadn’t finished a race at Glentress at the last 4 attempts, I had to give this round a go despite only ridden one other round at the beginning of the season.
The course was a less climbing-centric version version of last year’s, with a superb new rooty singletrack section that skirts the skills-area. I’d done two practice laps on the Saturday, and after a bit of tyre-pressure experimentation, I was ready to go.
The start was pretty brutal, big-ringing it up the fireroad. I was pretty near the back already, completely lacking in the power required to keep up. Once off the fireroad, things settled down, and apart from dropping my pump near the end of the first lap, I kept a steady pace.
By the end of my 4th lap my legs were really feeling the effort. A look at my watch told me if I wasted 6 minutes, I would get lapped, and thus could record a finish without doing another lap. After some soft-tapping, Gareth came past on his way to the win, leaving me to just cruise in. A little sprint with Richard grabbed me the second-last finishing place.
I realise this wasn’t up to my usual standards, but all I wanted was the finish, especially after a fairly sparse year as far as racing goes.
