Fort William NPS

The journey was long winded - it took us in total 8hrs to get to Fort William. It was exciting though, as I was looking forward to riding Fort William.

We arrived at the Glen Nevis campsite and pitched out tents and headed out to the town to grab some food. We ended up at a chip shop, where the fish and chips tasted like shit! Definitely not going there again! We didn't stay in town for too long, as we were all pretty tired from the journey but we didn't realize that the campsite closed it's gates at 11pm... so we had to park the van outside the campsite ( which is always risky) and walked to our tents. I slept like a baby and felt refreshed for the morning.

This was the first day of practice and I really wanted the first run to be over and done with! Both me and Emma were shitting ourselves at the thought of riding 'FORT WILLIAM'! We hadn't even walked the course so was unaware of what lines to do, so we were almost riding the course blind for the first run! It was exciting and scary! The 2nd and 3rd run went well but I started to feel the pain in my hands and fingers! I crashed on my 4th practice run and i think it was a run too many! Marshal's told me to get some food before I even attempted to do my seeding run in the afternoon. So with a loooooong break (about... 4hrs!) I was then going to do my seeding run. I was quite scared, and it almost felt like it was my proper race run! But I made myself take it easy and just treat it as another practice run. I hardly pedaled! The bottom section I practically free wheeled it! haha! I got a time of 7mins30 which put me in 3rd place.

I had one practice run before my race run, but i couldn't get rid of the pain in my hands, not making excuses here! I didn't want to overdo it in the morning cos i knew i would be too tired come race run. However, i think i should have just gone for another run really, cos in my race run i just kept making silly mistakes that cost me lots of time. I came off in the woods, not a full on crash, but was going too slow in the woods and the root took me out!! Then Monet came past so waited for her and a root trapped my rear wheel so had to unhook that. Basically, I lost about 20 seconds easy in there! Anyway to cut a long story short, race run was atrocious and I felt rubbish, but the weekend was mint!! My time was 7mins 45 which put me in 6th place. Out of 6... haha!!

I feel this is all a massive learning curve for me, it is my first season racing and this time last year, racing at Fort William would have only been a dream... so you can see I am improving and getting experience under my belt. Now what I have to learn is to put that new experience and my mistakes into my riding to improve my racing! The biggest thing for me this weekend, is to not take things seriously, I tend to think 'hmm that is going to affect my racing' but I also need to remember to have fun and have a laugh! It's been hard to have two consecutive races being poor, but I think you have to go down to come back up and I'm hoping my 'up' will be at the national champs this weekend!