Saturday the 12th saw the Student Championships held at Moelfre near Oswestry. Now in my 3rd year at Heriot Watt and being a Sports Scholar I couldn’t miss this event and I am certainly glad I did not!
I set off Thursday morning for the 4 hour 30 minute drive to Wales, we arrived at Moelfre to find no course markings or tape yet, we headed up and had a look around, it was so windy I could barely stand up. The track had been ridden a lot but was generally in pretty good condition. We headed back to our hotel and went out for a candlelit Italian meal for 2 in Oswestry, awkward! Loading up on Spag Bol we watched a bit of Motocross and got an early night in preparation for first day’s practise.
Practise went well and thankfully the wind had died down, I did a solid 6 runs and felt pretty happy. The Student Champs is slightly different to any other event I have participated in as it lots of un experienced riders leading to practise being quite comedy between avoiding riders and seeing some crashes, it provided a fair amount of entertainment!
After a good day, headed back to the hotel and went for another Italian but this time loaded up on a double portion of Spag Bol, we watched Rocky 2 and headed to bed by 10.
Race day went well there was a lot of hanging around and finally by 2 o’clock it was time for seeding. I put in a good effort and achieved 6th not quite where I wanted to be but not far off! I thought about where I could make up time for the finals and was pretty motivated to go 100%. As we headed up to the top, it started raining super heavy and the top 20 had some pretty interesting conditions. I decided to play it safe and put maximum efforts into where it was hard packed! I came down with a clean run and went into 2nd. I ended up finished 5th, I was relatively happy however would have like to be on the podium. I know what I need to do to prepare for the rest of the season.
The crowd at the bottom of both runs were unreal and were dying for crashes, so much noise and cheering, was awesome. All races need a crowd like this; it was like a mini World Cup at Fort William, very LOUD!
The Heriot Watt team placed 2nd overall, which was awesome and we are now the fastest Uni in Scotland, nice!
Probably the funniest part of the weekend was the XC champs, with the DH over everyone turns to creating havoc for the XC riders, this year was no different and with an already technical descent at Moelfre the crowd made it even harder by adding rock gardens, jumps, drops as well as orange and banana peel, not to mention the water all over the track to make it even harder for them! I saw some serious carnage and plenty of crashes, it was hilarious.
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