Photo Courtesy of Mike at 1st Gear
Sunday the 9th of February saw the 1st round of the Gorrick Spring Series held at Gorrick's first ever venue Crowthorne wood. This was also the first race where the team went head to head against each other. Race day conditions were decent with a chill in the air but no rain to speak of :), the course was still wet due to the rain we have had the past few days and weeks. We all rode the Expert/Elite Race which kicked of at 10am.
The race started pretty quick with Ben Thomas (Mountain Trax - Vauxhall Motors cycling Team manager) taking up the initial pace followed by myself and the youngest rider on the team (Sam Stean). It wasn't long before me and Ben got a sizeable gap on the rest of the field. We worked well together taking turns at the front sharing the workload very well. We were growing the gap lap by lap and coming into start the last lap it was still just me and Ben. Coming into the Arena we came up to the Leading Expert female rider Mel Alexander of (Scott/Contessa/Syncross), Ben hesitated to pass but I quickly nipped through and got a couple of seconds on Ben and this was my chance. I had a good 4seconds on Ben coming out of the feed zone and had to absolutely bury myself for another sub 18minutes of pain to secure the win. I rode hard but safe on the last lap and it was enough to snap the elastic between myself and Ben. I became very emotional towards the end of the last lap and crossed the finish line 1 min 22seconds of Team Manager Ben Thomas. The team certainly performed yesterday securing the top 4 places out of 11 Expert/Elite riders.
This was the first proper thrashing on my new Scott Scale RC 29 in Large with Strada Carbon wheels and it failed to disappoint. The bike weighs around 9kg with winter tyres and small plastic mudguards which is 3lbs lighter than last years bike with the same wheels!. This just shows how good the Scott frame is with untold stiffness and an awesome build kit to shave them extra grams off. As soon as the trail heads up the bike does really help you out as a rider due to the low weight/high stiffness and does also help ive lost around 1.5kg in bodyweight since last season :).
The next Race for myself and the Team will be the 2nd round of the Spring Series at a hilly Caesars Camp in Aldershot, this should be an interesting race as its much closer to the official start of the season so we should see a good high quality turnout :).
Big Thanks to the team for all the support and tools to do the job :). Also thanks to my old man Andre Pucci for passing bottles.
Pictures and Results from Yesterdays race is below
Results - http://www.timelaps.co.uk/assets/uploads/EVENTREPORT.aspx?eventid=275CrowthorneWood09/02/2014#Expert Male
Pictures from John Newport at Vermont Images from our Photo-shoot yesterday are on the "Mountain Trax - Vauxhall Motors Cycling team" Page.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.653603331347819.1073741879.143937835647707&type=1
Below are a few odd pictures from John @ Vermont Images :).
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