The first section of the day was the old harescramble course from the weekend before, and it was pretty beat up but it was a ton of fun. I felt really comfortable and just tried to stay smooth the whole time to put up a good score. I fell once in this section but was quick to get up; this hurt my score a little bit. I ended up finishing 4th overall in this test.
The second test was really fun with some good flowing trail where you could really keep your speed up and just be smooth on the bike. I had a good test going until I got to some tight trees and got messed up on where I was going and got lost. So I was riding around for 20-30 seconds trying to find the trail again so that definitely hurt my score too. I ended up 6th overall in this section.
The third section was also a great section; it had a lot of great flowing trail with some tighter sections. I had a little trouble in this section with stalling my bike a lot, I was trying to be smooth and was riding in to high of a gear so that hurt my score but I’m stilling learning how to ride the Husqvarna through the tight woods. I ended up posting the 9th fastest time in this section.
Then we went onto the 4th section and I was running in 6th a couple of seconds away from 5th so I had to have a good section. I got going on the section and was feeling great I was riding really well and just flowing and trying not to make mistakes. I came to a low lying branch and I went to duck under the limb but I think the limb was also lying across the trail and it came up and slapped me in the face. When it came up I had a broken visor and a bloody nose and it sort of knocked my vision off and messed my focus up. I ended up finishing 6th overall in this test too.
When I went into the 5th test I was still recovering, sort of, from the knock to my face. I went into the 5th test really pushing hard and it was a really tight section. I ended up getting stuck in between two trees and could not get out. I was in an awkward spot and I was stuck there for 20 to 45 seconds which sort of really knocked me off my game and ended up having a bad test.
The last test of the day I struggled too. I could not get back into my flow and was making tons of mistakes. So at the end of the day I ended up finishing 8th overall. I’m happy with my first 2012 race on the Husqvarna txc 310 and I have plenty to improve on for this year.
I would like to thank Fred Andrews Racing, Husqvarna, Fly racing, Maxxis Tire, x-brand goggles, Enduro Engineering, All Balls Racing, Alpinstars, Bell helmets, Asterisks knee braces, and super B.
~andrew
