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Bringewood - Pearce Cycles

I’d been home from New Zealand for a matter of days and realised Pearce Cycles had a race at the weekend at Bringewood. I LOVE Pearce races and was pretty stoked I could do it! 

I got all my stuff together and hit the road early hours of Saturday morning. I was quite nervous, anxious and excited; this is my first race in the UK and in my new Elite category title since being in New Zealand. I knew I had improved but this would determine how much, as I would be competing with all the girls I raced with last year. It was pretty weird having all the gear with me. In New Zealand I just took myself and my bike to the races, didn’t need spare kit, tyres etc. I was also missing Joel and Emma. Since I started racing in 2011, I’ve done most of the UK races with these 2, they keep me happy and relaxed, which helps with “trying” to have a chilled fun run; Alas, Joel is cracking on with his Masters Degree and Emma is having a break from DH, trying a variety of races, including; xc, enduro, triathlons etc. But as soon as I got to Bringewood I saw soooo many people that I hadn’t seen over the winter and was stoked to catch up with everyone, they’d all been keeping up to date with my NZ adventures via facebook and were looking forward to seeing some fast NZ riding .. no pressure!! HA!

The track was running so well, I really did bring the weather back with me, hadn’t rained since I got home making the tracks perfect. I was smashing out the runs all day Saturday and didn’t get tired. It really made me realise how I may not have intentionally done training over the winter, but just by being somewhere where riding is so accessible with such long tracks my body was conditioned to do lots of riding in a short time.

The bottom section of Bringewood is probably one of my favourite sections of a track ever. It always seems to be dry, even if the top part of the track is a mud bath. It’s full of trees and heaps of bumps; you come flying through at full speed weaving through the trees, jumping, whooping, ducking and diving. It feels like no one could possibly go faster than you at that time. I did all the jumps on the track which I’d never done before, so I was feeling good.

 The whole weekend was so much fun, everyone was happy, I saw loads of good friends and the riding was epic. When it came to race runs I was so chilled from having fun that it barely felt like a race run, the pressure I usually feel was gone. Both my race runs were good, no crashes, and it felt pretty smooth, the open section dragged as I could feel the weight of my bike sucking me into the ground and adding seconds onto my time, but I didn’t care.. that’ll get sorted with a new bike I’m sure. 
 
I still compared my time to the senior girls as it was only a few months ago that I was battling against them, I beat the senior winner by 10 seconds, and came 2nd in Elite. I was buzzing and stoked to be home.

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Photo by Dan.Armishaw



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    Traharn (Arnold) Chidley
    Simply informing you of my racing experiences.