To start it off I travelled to Taupo to race the Day Night Thriller, this event is run in the same format as the Moonride. It's a 12 hour relay race, which you can do in a team or you can go solo if you're real hardcore like Duane and Megan!! Avanti Plus Waitakere put together two mean as teams 'A+ Waitakere Still Classy' and 'A+ Waitakere Old School Classy', I was part of the still classy team along with Piki, Elliot, JT and my brother Peter.
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| The start of Thriller |
The course this year was very different to what I remember from two years ago, for starters it was quite a lot shorter and it was real fast with the fastest laps recorded just under 10 minutes! Due to it being such a short lap, double laps were the way to go, this gave each of us more time to recover so we could go out hard again. The track was pretty straightforward, reasonably flat with a couple of pinch climbs, tight corners and a fun, fast grassy downhill near the start of the lap.
I enjoyed the course even though it was a lot shorter, this added an extra challenge, because there were so many people out on the course it could get quite congested so you had to be on constantly on the lookout for hotlines. It was was cool being in the same team as my bro, because we're both real competitive so each lap I pushed it harder, I was on a mission to beat his best lap time!
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| Thanks to Peter for the photo! |
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| Team A+ Waitakere Still Classy |
Overall we managed to complete 64 laps, which put us in 3rd place in the open category. Big thanks once again to Catherine for organising us and being the best camp mum! Dylan for doing a awesome job looking after our bikes and my team mates for another wicked 12 hour relay effort!
On Sunday morning we decided to go via Craters of the Moon and hit up the trails for a couple of hours before heading home, it was so worthwhile as the tracks there were so much fun. Check out this video my brother put together one of the awesome trails we rode...Craters of the Moon - Coasters
The following weekend was the first round of the Auckland XC Champs series. The first race of the series was out at Woodhill, nice and close to home. Luckily we had a heavy dousing of rain during the week which meant the trails were in prime condition! :) Unfortunately I didn't get to ride much of the trails, on my first lap I got a mechanical :( much to my disappointment! So I headed back to the race village to cheer on the JAFAKIDS. There were a lot of blue shirts out there racing! It was so good to see so many Jafa riders out there racing and dominating, as well as the younger ones giving it a go. Especially the girls congrats to Jess, Gemma, Isobel and Paige for taking out the u17 girls, and Harriet and Brittany 1st and 2nd in the u19 girls. So good to see you girls doing so well! Was stoked for my bro Peter who came 2nd in the u19 boys. It's awesome to see such good results coming from the JAFAKIDS!
Next event is the Giant 2W Gravity Enduro which I am soooo excited about!!!!
