#leequarry

Want to start this post by sending healing vibes to my mate steve who broke his arm last week coming off in a rock garden.

The weekend just gone was round 3 of the PMBA enduro series held at lee quarry/havoc bike park. It was set to be a scorcher of a weekend both in terms of weather and riding on a big tough loop of 22 miles and 3600ft of climbing. 

Practice was amazing and showed us the trails were all really fun with no real fire road sprints, after practice i set up the tent, helped a guy get his van out of a bog and ate a load of pasta to load up on the carbs. i then got my head down hoping to get a good nights sleep, unfortunately that didn’t happen.

Sunday morning i took the tent down and left to get parked close to the race start i then ate a lot of muesli (mistake 1). safe to say i was full. we set of for stage one with a short sharp transition. Stage one was mainly trail centre with a really fun off piste of camber section 2/3 of the way down. I felt i rode it well trying to be smooth and save as much energy as possible.

Stage 2 was a interesting little stage it started with a fast open section then a tight left hander into a mess of axle deep ruts that were to be avoided at all costs, over a awkward little stream that we decided would be quicker to jump off an run through, i tried getting on the bike to soon after which cost me time. the stage finished with a steep chute and quick sprint. again i felt i rode the stage minus the mistake with the bike.

Stage 3 was my favorite stage of the race with a really flowy top section into another quick bike carry up a techy climb. into a slightly more technical bottom section. This was my best stage of the day. For the first 3 stages i had a little bit of food at the finish even though i was full and after i had my bit of food after stage 3 i felt a bit ill so decided to stop eating for a bit to let my body digest what i had. (mistake 2)

stage 4 is where the energy levels crashed which ended up in 2 crashes on the stage which is a shame cause it was another really fun stage without the crashes. 

stage 5 was greasy at the top resulting in another crash and had a really fun off camber last section with the timing transponder right at the top of a really steep couple of corners that turned into carnage corner. 

the last stage again was trail centre with one off piste steep chute into a a rocky chute, by this point mental fatigue had set in along with physical and I crashed again. 

Even with 4 crashes i beat 18% of people which im happy with and as usual i’ve come away learning something new. Don’t eat quite as much for breakfast and eat little and often through the day even if i feel full to keep energy levels up.

Cheers for reading