June has been much calmer as I have moved out of the hectic period of study, exams, training, and racing. This break which also aligned the start of a rare 3-week break from racing, allowed me some time off to enjoy riding and have some fun, although the training never stops for long.
Starting this month at Cathkin Brae for round 4 of the Scottish National Series on a sweltering, dry Scottish summer day. Just after the top of the first climb, I attacked and grew my gap consistently, riding to a solo win on the newly designed course and securing the Scottish Series.
Recently I completed school work ex
perience in my local bike shop, The Bicycle Works, who are also a SORT team sponsor. This allowed me to develop my mechanics skills and taught me how to better tune SRAM AXIS gears, remove bottom brackets and internally route cables.
The last weekend of June was taken up by a road trip to Houffalize in Belgium to compete in a round of the 3 Nations Cup, an XC Series covering Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany which can bring in over a hundred riders in just my u17 race. We left Edinburgh at 530 and finally arrived in Houffalize after a day and a half travel through England, the Euro Tunnel, France, and Belgium. I hope to be repeating this in the cross season.
On arrival I completed two practice laps where I found a rooty, rocky and dusty course filled to the brim with challenging but exceedingly fun A lines. Including features such as chutes, drops and short braking zones with a lack of grip it made if the hardest I have ever competed on. Then after warm-up and gridding we were ready to race. Starting from the back row I moved up the field as quickly as possible into the top 30 by using the width of the hilly road start to my advantage. I peaked at 9th on lap 2 before falling back to 16th because of gear issues, made harder by a course which required plenty of gear changing due to the challenging uppy downy nature of the course.
Despite the slightly disappointing result it w
as an incredibly enjoyable experience to race abroad. In this race I learnt to race a very technically challenging course without sessioning features and trying different lines. This forced me to adapt during the race and learn about the course even while racing
This trip was helped hugely by Ride fo
r Charlie who provided support helping up to get out there, and I along with Daisy would like to thank them for their incredible support.
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