BDS Fort William

 

After a poor result from me at Rheola (Round 1), I wanted to get a good result here and continue to start the ball rolling for the season. I also wanted to use this weekend as a training weekend (practice wearing clips) ready for the Fort William World Cup in June.

After walking the track on the Friday, they had built some new sections, which looked smoother. They had taken a lot of the rocks away so thought it would be even quicker. Going up for my first run was terrifying – I’m not going to lie – the thought of riding here in clips for the first proper time was a scary prospect! However, as soon as I got into it, i got on well with the clips and forgot about them, concentrated on my riding and my confidence soon began to rise. Practice went well Saturday and I was having so much fun, i did begin to feel a little tired by my 4th run so I called it a day there. This weekend is to see it’s biggest field of Female Elites in a while with 10 girls all in. It was pretty cool to be racing with everyone and to be challenged by Rachel Atherton and Clare Buchar!

First run down Sunday morning was epic – typical Fort William – BIG holes appeared was doing my normal lines was nearly impossible. I decided to use my seeding run as another practice. I got down in 6th place with a time of 6mins47s. I thought that it would be faster than last year, but turns out it’s about 20 seconds longer!! I went for it in my race run and managed to get a solid run together – but no way near a perfect run. I felt strong and rode to 3rd place with a time of 6mins28s. Imnproving my seeding run time by 19 seconds. It was no means a quick run but I know what I need to do to improve for the World Cup. Hopefully I can push it a bit harder for the WC.